


OBSERVE

by Schrodingers_Rufus



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Allergies, Anxiety Attacks, Body Horror, Comes Back Wrong, Gen, Gore, Horror, Memory Loss, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Seizures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9102886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schrodingers_Rufus/pseuds/Schrodingers_Rufus
Summary: There's a new video on the Marble Hornets channel, a cry for help. Tim's not out of the woods yet.





	1. FIND ME. HELP ME.

He’d been walking for what felt like an hour now, and god, he wanted to kill Jay. 

(No, he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Somebody else got there first.)

He could feel the sun prickling the back of his neck, just above the collar. He could feel sweat starting to accumulate under the straps of his chest-mounted camera (a new one he bought a few months ago, _just in case,_ he remembers thinking). He could hear the buzz of insects in the grass, the wet heat of the humid summer air pressing down on him, and _everything itched_.

He didn’t want to do this. He could just turn around, get back in the car, drive home–or at least a hotel. This was stupid–this was _Jay_ -tier stupid, but here he was again. Alone. The camera was rolling. The mask was long gone, probably growing algae at the bottom of the lake or rotting in a landfill. Like Jay told him, gripping his hand painfully, white-knuckled, in an unlit hotel room: even if his mind couldn’t be trusted, the camera could. That _thing_ could warp the image, distort the audio, but that was nothing compared to what it had done to their heads. 

Then again, for all he knew, the video could be missing all sorts of things. For all he knew, that thing could make the camera show whatever it wanted. 

Tim chuckled, and it made his throat ache. 

—

Two nights ago, a new video had appeared on the Marble Hornets channel. He’d nearly forgotten he’d attached it to his phone (liar, liar, _liar_ ) until the notifications started rolling in. Heart beating and throat constricted, gripping the half-empty pill bottle in his pocket like it would make a difference, he’d watched it in the car.

It looked like one of those idiotic “totheark” videos. 

(He hadn’t noticed them the first time he’d searched “Marble Hornets”, but after a few weeks on the road with Jay, occasionally roped into assisting with editing duty, he’d finally started to pay attention. Not that they really said anything worthwhile; mostly cryptic threats and puzzles that repeated what they knew already. Jay paid attention to them, but again, Jay was an idiot.)

The edits were choppy and distorted, and the actual content of the video ranged from the mundane to the so-surreal-it-was-definitely-staged. Tim swore through the lump in his throat; that killed his theory that totheark was Brian (oh god, Brian). That killed his theory that everyone he knew who was directly involved was either dead or had their memory so thoroughly fucked that they barely knew their own name. 

“FIND ME,” it flashed, for a split second becoming “HELP ME.” 

“Yeah, sure,” he’d spat, bile raising in his throat. “I’ll get right on that.” 

That night after work, he’d gone back to his barren little studio apartment, booted up his laptop, and despite his self-preservation instincts screaming themselves hoarse, he ripped the video off Youtube and started to look at it more closely. 

Flashes of Rosswood (of course) and Benedict Hall (made sense). A blank-faced doll moving in that jerky, unnatural, bad-stop-motion way he’d seen in countless student films. Clean, white, sans-serif text spelling out ominous nonsense like, “THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE”, “DID YOU THINK THIS WAS OVER?”, “LIAR”, “WATCHING YOU”, and the aforementioned “FIND ME”/“HELP ME” switch he’d seen earlier. 

He sunk his head down to the desk slowly, kneading at his temples. When that wasn’t satisfying, he pulled his hands away from his head and pounded them against the desk. Again. Again. His fists stung. Again. 

He took a breath in and snorted it out, his nostrils burning. 

Slowly, he turned back to the video, this time slowing it down, examining each frame in the distorted places, squinting to see what he could make out. Most of it was indecipherable, at least to him, but he was able to distinctly make out a shot of Jay’s face with rough “X"es scrawled over the eyes. ( _Sick, sick, sick_.) 

He’d taken to Twitter then, logging into the old account. (And he was ashamed to find that he still knew the password, even after all this time.) Bracing himself for a swarm of mentions, it was a strange relief to find the number of commenters had thinned out since he had posted his last entry. He scrolled through with an underlying revulsion, feeling like he had when he was a child, when his mother forced him to eat cooked spinach. (“Yes, Timmy, I know it tastes bad, but you need your vegetables!” “Yes, Timmy, I know the pills are hard to swallow, but they’ll make you feel better!”) It was mostly just repeats of what he’d already seen in the video, mixed in with frantic messages asking about his safety that made his stomach turn at the prospect of replying. However, he started to notice a new pattern, one he hadn’t spotted in the video. 

“Has tta changed fonts?” 

“MH, did you get hacked? This doesn’t look like a real totheark vid.” 

“tim, getting lazy. forgot to switch the font.”

“That’s jay’s font. Accident?”

“Tim, did you make this?” 

He hadn’t lost any time, and the camera (just in case, just in case) hadn’t shown him getting up in the night. This wasn’t him, and the more he looked, the more he had to agree that it didn’t quite look like totheark, either. 

He watched the video again, normal speed, no modifications. There was something recognizable about the audio, something he remembered from setting his childhood cassette tape player to reverse. He stripped out the audio, played it backwards. It was sludgy, indecipherable. He sped it up. 

“ _Oh god, please stop. Please. Please. Leave me alone. I’m so tired. Not again, please–please, not again. Not again. Not again. Not agai–_ ” 

That was Jay’s voice. That was Jay’s voice, sobbing through words Tim had never heard him say, not in any video. This was new (or very old, taken from footage _only Jay could access)._

His phone buzzed. A notification on Twitter. 

Hands shaking, he minimized Premiere and looked at the Twitter tab still open in the background, still sitting on the Marble Hornets page. 

“View 1 new Tweet.” 

He clicked. 

“FIND ME”

“View 1 new Tweet.” 

He clicked. 

“HELP ME” 

More notifications from the followers, more frantic questions. Feeling like he was watching his hands more than controlling them, he managed to draft a new message. 

“Past two tweets aren’t me -tim” 

“View 3 new Tweets.” 

He clicked. 

“IN THE TREES” 

“FIND ME” 

“HELP ME” 

The last message had a photo attached. Tim squinted at it, enlarged it. After a few moments, the knowledge slid back into place. The annex, the small building set off from the hospital. That must be where he is. 

( _He’s dead, he’s dead and not coming back._ ) 

That must be where he is.

— 

Tim slapped at a mosquito buzzing at his ear. He couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes away from the hospital, assuming that Rosswood didn’t rearrange itself again like some goddamn Rubik’s cube. 

He hadn’t told the internet where he was going. If there was anything he’d learned from his ‘investigations’ with Jay, it was that if you’re going to do something stupid, don’t broadcast it where everyone and their mom can see. 

Though, now that he thought about it, Jay–or whoever or whatever had hacked his Twitter–had posted the annex photo publicly, so for all he knew, some well-meaning follower had already gone out there. And possibly gotten themselves killed.

He felt for the knife in his pocket, folded safely in its case. It was small and clumsy–a far cry from the gun a part of him wished he was carrying–but guns made him think of Alex. (Made him think of Jay.) He’d wavered close enough to Alex’s mindset already, and he didn’t like the thought of making the similarities any stronger. 

Granted, he was also a lousy shot.

Through the trees, he could just make out the shape of the hospital. His knees locked up. 

A part of his mind chanted, “ _It’s burned down, it’s gone, it’s over,”_ while another part of him screamed, “ _By what fucking metric would anyone call this ‘over’?_ ”

He took a step forward. Another. The bottle of pills rattled in his other pocket. 

His head wasn’t buzzing the way it did when that thing was around, so he hoped that was a good sign. 

Finally he made his way around the hospital to the annex, fists clenching and unclenching as he tried to override his instinctual need to run, to hide, to do literally anything but the deeply stupid thing he was about to do. 

With a creak, he opened the door. 

“Jay?” he called out, feeling self-conscious despite himself. “Jay, this had _better_ be you.” 

He heard a distant shuffling and felt a familiar itch in his throat that he passionately hoped was nothing. (Or asbestos. Either would be preferable over the alternative.)

He tried to call out again, but it was lost in a cough.  _No, no, no, not today._ He pulled out the pill bottle, ready to dry-swallow if anything got worse. He slowly inched toward the noise he’d heard, feet dragging through the debris and kicking up dust. He painfully strangled another cough, jaw straining. 

“Jay?” he rasped.

More shuffling. There was definitely someone in there with him. _Or a raccoon, or a squirrel, or the wind_ , he reminded himself, letting out a chuckle that descended into a coughing fit. Forcing the top of the bottle open with shaking hands, he shook out two pills and swallowed them dry. 

He listened again, hoping his outburst hadn’t scared them off. Silence, followed by more shuffling, louder this time, closer. 

He picked up speed. “Jay?”

The sound of shoes on concrete, not more than two rooms away. More shuffling. 

Tim ran, his feet scrabbling against the dusty floor as he changed direction, passing through the empty doorframe of a room he found unsettlingly familiar. 

There was a shape on the ground, huddled, its face to the wall. Its shoulders were narrow, heaving with labored breaths, and very, very familiar. 

Tim approached slowly. “Jay, it’s me.” He couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice. “Jay, _turn around._ ” 

The shape–and it was definitely Jay, nobody else had that unsettlingly familar silhouette, that tattered brown hoodie–moved, half-turning. He had the hood pulled up over his head so Tim couldn’t see his face, but when he turned, Tim could barely make out the shape of the brim of his hat. He held up one hand, and Tim nearly laughed to see he was still carrying a hand-held camera. 

He trained the camera on Tim, adjusting the angle to follow him as he shifted back and forth uncomfortably. Jay still hadn’t turned far enough for Tim to see his face. 

Tim started forward, “Come _on_.” Another cough ripped from his throat, and he saw Jay tense, leaning into the wall. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here–I don’t know what the hell you’re doing _alive_ –but we have to go _now_.” 

Jay turned slowly, camera still trained on Tim, and finally Tim could see his face. 

It was covered by what looked like a balaclava without the eye holes, a blank black mask with a design painted across the front in white: a simple eye, wide open, with a narrow pupil. 

“God _dammit,_ ” Tim muttered. 

“Hey, you?” He finally said, louder this time. “I don’t know what you’re calling yourself now, Jay–mask–thing, but we are _leaving_ , even if I have to pick you up and carry you out of Rosswood myself.” 

(Jay was taller than him, but slighter by far. He didn’t doubt that he could pick him up, though he wasn’t sure if he could manage to get all the way back to the car in this heat.) 

His phone buzzed, and with his focus still on Jay, he slowly pulled out his phone. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a message from what he just knew was Jay’s number, even though he deleted the contact months ago.

“FIND ME

HELP ME”

Tim turned to the shape huddled on the floor, voice exploding from his strained throat. “What do you think I’m trying to do?” 

Another buzz. 

“HELP ME” 

Another buzz.

“HELP ME”

Several more. 

“HELP ME”

“HELP ME” 

“HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP”

It took all Tim’s willpower not to throw the phone against the wall. He gripped it tightly, the edges digging into his skin. He felt the fizzing feeling start, bubbling quietly at the back of his skull. Though he tried to stop them, he couldn’t; great, heaving coughs ripped from his throat. Jay kept the camera trained on him as he lost his balance, hitting the concrete hard. 

“ _Get up!”_ Tim yelled, even as he struggled to his feet. “ _Run!”_

Jay just stayed frozen in place, the camera following Tim as he pulled himself up unsteadily, swaying on his feet. 

“You want help?” Tim asked, eyes wild. “We’re leaving, _now._ ” 

He lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Jay’s midsection and lifting him even as he struggled. He clumsily dragged his target to the door, wincing as his shoulder hit the doorframe. _Like hell I’m leaving without you again._

Jay struggled at first but then hung limp, finally seeming to grasp the gravity of the situation. Trying to maneuver the lanky man into a sort of bridal carry, Tim admitted that at least dead weight was better than a fight. 

He kicked the door open, and the brief burst of heroic satisfaction quickly gave way to mind-numbing panic. The buzzing in his head was getting louder, more insistent, though he could feel the pills start to kick in, staving off what he knew would have been a full seizure without them. 

He started to run, slow and clumsy with a hundred-and-something pound weight in his arms, the need to _get out of there now_ overriding his desire to convince Jay to stand up and run. God knew if he even understood English at this point; what he’d seen of his own masked alter ego had seemed animalistic, feral. At least Jay didn’t seem violent. 

Nothing else mattered but running, and as soon as he caught sight of the hiking trail, he sprinted as fast as he could possibly manage. His lungs were screaming, his throat was burning, and his heart was pounding faster than it probably had in years. (A distant part of him remembered an old book he’d been forced to read at school, a story about a sled dog whose heart had burst just as it won the race.) 

He saw the car. _He saw the car._ Everything hurt, but the car was _right there._

A burst of static ripped through Tim’s skull, sending him tripping sideways. Jay fell from his hands and hit the gravel without making a sound. He curled around the camera, protecting it. Tim yanked him up by one arm. “ _Run._ ” 

Dragging Jay behind him, Tim half-ran, half-hobbled across the parking lot, slower now that Jay had both feet on the ground. Finally, Jay seemed to get his bearings, picking up speed just as they reached the car. Tim pulled the keys from his pocket, the jingling ringing painfully in his ears, and unlocked the driver’s side door. Once inside, he flipped the switch that would unlock the passenger’s side. “Get in!” 

Jay just stood, frozen, camera in hand. 

With an anguished groan, Tim left the driver’s seat and yanked the passenger door open. He nearly threw Jay inside, slamming the door behind him. With a click, he locked the car. Making a final glance over at Jay (whose expression was maddeningly unreadable under the mask), he turned the key in the ignition and peeled out of the parking lot, squinting to see the road over the lights flashing in his eyes. 


	2. I FOLLOW

They pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript motel a few hours later. They stopped only once, pulling into a gas station so that Tim could check the local listings for somewhere cheap but not hourly. As Tim drove, he left a message on his work’s answering machine, warning that he had a fever and that he didn’t think he could come in the next day. He was pushing his luck, and he knew it, but he’d been fired before. Once more wouldn’t be the end of the world. 

Tim turned to the passenger’s seat, where Jay sat stiffly with his knees curled up to his chest, the camera pointed straight ahead. 

“No chance I could convince you to sit tight for a few minutes while I check in, is there?” He was going for ‘polite’, but he couldn’t get his tone past ‘resigned annoyance’. 

Jay jumped, visibly startled, and turned the camera on him. The whole situation felt unsettlingly, annoyingly familiar. As expected, Jay said nothing. 

“Taking that as a no.” Tim ran his hands over his face, then up to his hair, gripping at the roots. He snorted with frustration. “Okay, then, new plan. How about _you_ take off that mask, so _we_ don’t look like we’re going to rob the place?” 

The camera whirred quietly. Jay didn’t move.

“Dammit, Jay–” Tim reached for the mask, shoving the camera out of the way.

 _That_ got Jay moving. With his free hand, he reached up to cover his face, cowering against the door like a panicked animal. Tim tried to shove his hand aside, but he fought back, digging into Tim’s arm with too-long nails. 

“ _Shit!”_ Tim recoiled, checking his arm in the fading sunlight streaming through the windshield. Jay definitely broke the skin, and he could see blood welling up in two of the crescent-shaped indentations. “Fine. You keep the mask. Happy?” 

Jay stayed pressed against the door. Tim could see the camera tip and its automatic focus adjust, probably to get a better look at his injury. He swatted it away. 

“Alright, so we’ve moved on to Plan Stupid.” He rubbed at his arm, trying to ease the stinging. “We both go in, so I can keep an eye on you. You keep the mask on, but you just…don’t look up. Ever.”

His phone buzzed. Tim glanced over, feeling his throat constrict when he recognized Jay’s number. 

“I FOLLOW”

“Okay,” Tim managed, incredulous. “I’ll, uh…take that as a 'yes’, then.”

—

Plan Stupid went about as well as could be expected–disastrously–but at least the woman at the front desk didn’t call the cops. Tim explained away Jay’s mask, which she noticed despite Jay’s attempts at looking anywhere but at her desk, by saying that they were going to a costume party that night. She raised a disbelieving eyebrow at that, like she knew _exactly_ what sort of 'party’ he meant. She then spotted the camera, which sent both eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. 

“Thank god for Southern hospitality,” Tim muttered as he dug the key–a real metal key this time, not a keycard–into the lock. They’d been given a place on the ground floor, and mercifully, this motel still offered smoking rooms. The door, its baby-blue paint faded and peeling, stood barely ten paces from where he parked the car. He yanked it open with some effort, blinking away flakes of paint that fell from the doorframe onto his face as he reached for the lightswitch. 

Jay hung close behind as Tim entered the room, his shoulders hunched as he used both hands to steady the camera. If he tried to run, Tim thought, he was close enough that Tim could grab him, slow him down. 

He didn’t run. He just followed behind, allowing Tim to close and lock the door behind him. As he fastened the deadbolt, Tim thought he heard the clock radio on the bedside table _hiss-pop-squeak_ and then fall silent. Jay just stood in the center of the room, rotating slowly as his camera took it all in. 

Tim sat down hard on the bed closest to the door, hearing the cheap matress squeal in protest under flimsy sheets. He scratched at his neck, and his arm hit cold plastic. He noticed with a start that he was still wearing the chest camera. 

Tim debated for a moment the prospect of turning it off, but he decided against it. ( _Just in case, just in case._ ) 

Tim took in a deep breath. “Jay.” 

Jay’s camera whipped around to face him, and the rest of Jay followed suit. 

Tim gripped the worn comforter, released it, gripped it again. When he spoke, he left no room for argument. “We need to talk.”

The radio was definitely hissing. Jay didn’t move.

Tim’s frustration boiled over. “God _dammit_ , Jay, you were _dead!_ I _saw_ you!” He stood up, started to pace. “You were on the floor, you were _bleeding_ on the floor, and you were dead!” 

( _YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT.)_

“And now you make contact after _god knows_ how long you spent wandering around in Rosswood, and you’re _fucked up_ , and I know nobody’s gonna give me a goddamn explanation because nothing, _nothing_ that comes out of Rosswood ever gets a goddamn explanation, and I’m just going to have to–to sit there, suck down another bottle of pills, and _take it_ like I’ve been doing since the day I first saw that thing–” 

The radio _squealed_ , cutting a jagged line through his thoughts. Instinctively, he pressed his hands to his ears. 

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. 

Too much, _too much_. Tim fell back against the bed, dumb luck keeping him from hitting the floor. Jay stood over him, camera focusing and refocusing. 

Clumsily, Tim pulled his phone from his pocket. 

“HELP ME”

“I got you out of Rosswood!” Tim shouted, voice choked. The radio hissed. “What more 'help’ do you think you need?” 

_Buzz, buzz, buzz._

“FIND ME”

“HELP ME” 

“FIND HER” 

“ 'Find her’?” Tim scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. This day had been hell, he’d been driving for hours, and the last thing he wanted was to play _totheark_ with his former roommate. 

_Buzz, buzz._

“HELP ME” 

“FIND HER” 

_Buzz._

“HELP ME FIND HER”

Oh no. An explanation fought its way into Tim’s sluggish consciousness, and he didn’t like it one bit. 

“Jessica,” Tim said flatly. 

_Buzz_. 

“HELP ME FIND HER” 

Tim sat silent for a moment, collecting his thoughts. Finally, he turned to face Jay, still half-sprawled across the bed. “Short answer: No. Long answer: I hid that tape for a reason, which I _thought_ you finally understood before you…”

Jay cocked his head, but the camera stayed steady. 

The radio flared to life. 

“Tim, it’s me.” A hiss and squeal of static. Tim’s eyes darted between Jay and the radio as the recognition slowly set in. He’d heard these words before. “–wrong; it’s completely wrong.” More static. “–I’m starting to lose it. I don’t know–” The static swelled, fading just enough to catch the next sentence. “–I’m sorry. I know why you kept that tape from me, and we’re not gonna get anywhere like this–” Hiss-pop. “–we’ll figure out what to do next.” A squeal, a half-bar of music. “–see things I know aren’t there, and it’s starting to make me feel really sick.”

With a hiss and a definitive click, the radio fell silent. 

Tim was shaking. He didn’t know when he started, but hearing Jay’s voice like that, distorted, chopped up, trying to communicate something Tim still couldn’t quite understand, it…it felt too familiar. Entirely too familiar.

What was left of Jay still stood above him, holding the camera. 

Tim tried to knead away a growing headache. “Can you–” he rasped. “–Can you tell me what happened to you?”

A pause, and then–

Buzz, buzz.

“STOPPED WORKING” 

“HAD TO BE FIXED” 

_Buzz._

“TAKEN APART” 

_Buzz._

“PUT BACK TOGETHER” 

Tim slowly sat up, inching back across the bed, back away from Jay ( _so familiar, too familiar)_ , silhouetted by the cheap hotel lamp. 

The radio hissed behind him, and Tim swore, startled. Eventually, the static coalesced into words. 

“ _Oh god, please stop. Please. Please. Leave me alone. I’m so tired. Not again, please–please, not again. Not again. Not again. Not agai–_ ” 

The phone shook in Tim’s hand. 

“TAKEN APART” 

_Buzz._

“PUT BACK TOGETHER” 

“Jay?” Tim started hesitantly. He hated the way his voice wavered. “What’s under the mask?” 

Finally, Jay moved, pointing the camera over to the opposite bed and following it. He sat down gingerly at the edge, and Tim thought he saw his free hand fidget for just a moment. 

_Buzz._

Tim looked down at his phone. 

“I DON’T KNOW”

 _Well, shit._ It sounded like Jay was nearly as lost as he was. (Though admittedly, that was nothing new.) He considered his next words carefully. 

“Can you…show me? I can…describe it for you, I guess.” 

After a pregnant pause, the phone buzzed again. 

“CANNOT BE TRUSTED” 

Tim was almost relieved to be angry. It felt stronger, more useful than being afraid. “This coming from the guy who stole my medical records and _posted them online_.”

Jay froze for a moment. 

Then, a flurry of texts came through, almost at once. 

“HAD TO LEARN” 

“HAD TO HAVE A RECORD” 

“NEEDED ADVICE” 

“HAD TO SHOW THEM” 

“ORDERS”

“DIRECTIVE” 

Tim sat up straighter. “Wait–wait, 'orders’?” All that 'had to’, 'needed to’ speak–it sounded like Alex. Tim didn’t want anyone or any _thing_ near him that sounded like Alex. 

The phone buzzed. 

“I OBSERVE” 

“I RECORD” 

“I LEARN” 

“I TEACH” 

“DIRECTIVE” 

Tim started to feel the panic set in, and he couldn’t quite generate the willpower to stop it. His throat constricted, goosebumps raised on his arms, and he felt a cold drop of sweat run down his back. His neck ached, and he felt the tension climb up his scalp. 

Jay’s free hand reached up to the edge of his mask. 

_Buzz._ Tim watched the messages scroll by, eyes half-glazed. 

“I HAVE TO KNOW” 

“DIRECTIVE” 

“TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE” 

“DO NOT LIE TO ME AGAIN” 

Jay removed the mask. 

He had no eyes. That was what Tim noticed first, his brain tearing itself out of its spiral of panic to fixate, unblinking, on Jay’s pale face. The place where his eyes should have been was scarred, caved in. He didn’t even have _eyelids_ , just swollen, discolored skin, pink and patchy like the skin of a burn victim. 

The rest of his face looked mercifully normal, though under the strange light of the hotel lamp, Tim couldn’t help but notice it had a sickly, unnatural tint, like something that had washed up from the bottom of the lake. 

“Your…” Tim rasped. “Your eyes are gone, Jay.” 

With the mask off, Jay’s body language was much easier to read. He looked startled for a moment. Then, he reached his free hand up to feel his face, poking and prodding at the swollen skin that hung over his empty eye sockets. Slowly, his lips quirked into something like a smile. 

_Buzz, buzz._

“ALWAYS WATCHES” 

“NO EYES” 

Tim thought he’d read that somewhere before. Or maybe he’d _written_ it somewhere before. He shook his head, and a muscle in his neck spasmed painfully. Wincing, one hand kneading the sore muscle in vain, Tim continued. “The camera. How are you..?” 

Jay smiled again, scanning the room with the camera. 

_Buzz, buzz_. 

“I OBSERVE” 

“I RECORD”

Tim stared, hand still on his neck. “You’re joking.”

 _Buzz_. 

“LIAR” 

Something broke inside Tim, and he wrenched himself to his feet, neck screaming with pain. “No. _No._ All of this–the messages, the radio–all of this, okay, sure. But you can’t–there’s no way you can _see_ with just–” He lurched toward Jay, reaching for the camera. 

The radio hissed, and Jay tried to stand up, to run, but Tim was faster. He wrapped both hands around the camera and pulled. 

The radio screamed. 

The camera did not come free. 

The camera did not come free because it could not come free. Closer now, Tim could see it–tissue, real living tissue, human tissue growing inside the camera. Spreading like spiderwebs across the machinery. Connecting it to its host. 

Jay shoved him away, hard. His knees hit the floor, concrete under carpet, and he let himself fall. Distantly, he could hear the phone buzzing on the bed. 


	3. LOUD

At first, Tim wasn't sure what woke him. With a groan and a clumsy swipe at his sleep-encrusted eyes, he tried to sit up, the fibers of the cheap carpet digging into his palm. He squinted through the darkness at the glaring red numbers on the clock radio: 4:32 AM. 

He heard a rustling next to his head and yelped, shooting back across the carpet until something--a bedframe, he realized--dug painfully into his lower back. 

Jay was perched ( _perched, god, like some kind of animal)_ on the neighboring bed, barely illuminated by the light of the clock. His mask was still off, and Tim could barely make out the soft red 'record' light of the camera. He tilted his head, brow furrowed in what looked like concern.

Tim's phone buzzed on the bed next to Jay. 

Trying to ignore the bone-deep ache he felt in his legs, his back, Tim pulled himself to his feet, trudged the two steps to the bed, and picked up the phone. 

"DO YOU HEAR THAT?"

Tim turned to Jay, confused. "Did you just send this?"

Jay nodded, camera pointed up at him now. He turned his head, tilting it slightly, like he was trying to pinpoint the source of a noise. 

Tim kept quiet for a moment, listening. All he could hear was a soft whirr coming from the vent overhead. "Just the air conditioner," he offered.   

Jay shook his head furiously. Tim's phone buzzed again. 

"SINGING" 

Now _that_ was cause for concern. "Jay, I'm not--I'm not hearing what you're hearing." He tried to think back to how his doctors talked him through the noises--'auditory hallucinations'--that sometimes accompanied his seizures, but all his brain latched onto were the times they talked down to him, the times they said the wrong things. (They were professionals, right? They had to have said _something_ useful, right?) 

He decided to wing it. Simplest explanation was hallucinations, sure, but he'd been convinced for years that tall, dark, and faceless was a hallucination, and look where that got him. "Okay, Jay-- _Jay._ " 

Jay snapped to attention. 

"We've got a few options here, none of them particularly good. Option one: I might just be going deaf. Option two: You're hearing things that aren't really there, which I know a little bit about. So we can handle it. Option three--" Tim sighed, dragged a hand down his face. "--Option three: It's got something to do with Rosswood." 

Jay grimaced, quirking his eyebrows and rocking his head back in something that read to Tim as an eyeroll. 

Then he winced, bringing his hands up to his ears, one still gripping the camera. Face contorted in pain, he curled into himself. 

Before he even knew what he was doing, Tim was sitting beside him on the bed, hand on his shoulder. "Hey, talk to me, Jay, talk to me." 

Tim's phone buzzed wildly in his pocket. 

"TOO LOUD" 

"TOO LOUD" 

"TOO LOUD" 

 Tim gripped Jay's shoulder tighter. Just by instinct, he started saying whatever came to mind, whatever he would want to hear, whatever he remembered telling himself. "It'll be over in a bit, just ride it out." 

( _Liar, liar, liar._ ) 

Jay sat up ramrod straight, facing forward, eyebrows up. If Tim didn't know better, he would say it looked like Jay saw something in the middle of the room. His camera arm lay limply at his side, lens covered by a fold of the comforter. 

Almost robotically, Jay stood up. 

Tim followed, grabbing for the sleeve of Jay's sweatshirt. "Hey-- _hey._ Slow down." 

Jay turned on his heel to face the television, a thick black monolith that looked like it hadn't been replaced since 1993. Tim could see the numbers of the clock reflected, warped by the curve of the screen. He could barely make out two shapes, silhouetted in red: Jay, his usual slump gone, standing at military attention, and himself, gripping the fabric of Jay's sleeve, shoulders hunched. 

With a faint electric squeal, the television turned on. 

Jay started shaking. Tim let go of his sleeve and grabbed his arm. 

At first, there was just hissing static and a faint channel number--44--in the top-right corner. Gradually, the static began to fade in the center, distortion still tearing at the edges of the screen. Tim squinted into the haze. 

Trees. Perfect. 

"Three guesses as to where _this_ was filmed," Tim muttered sarcastically. 

Jay didn't respond. 

Tim could see a form walking among the trees, and as the image cleared, he could make out the shape of a girl, a tall one, with dark hair and a pale dress. She walked with purpose, like the place was familiar. 

The image cleared, and Tim could feel his heart rate climb as familiarity sank in. _Jessica._

She reached the edge of the forest and kept walking, following the street. The terrain grew less and less familiar. Eventually she came to a small string of buildings lit by street lamps, taking a straight line through the parking lot toward the largest building. 

With a loud hiss and a squeal, the picture distorted, disintegrating into static. 

Feeling like he'd just been dropped back into his body after some time away, Tim surged forward, feeling frantically for the power button. 

The screen went mercifully dark. 

Jay still stood locked in place, facing the screen despite the camera hanging at his side. 

Tim's phone buzzed, and Tim couldn't help but feel relieved. Releasing his grip on Jay's arm, he squinted at the screen. 

"FIND ME" 

"HELP HER" 

Tim opened his mouth to respond, to see if Jay had finally broken out of his strange stupor, but then he caught motion out of the corner of his eye--Jay was off like a shot, heading straight for the door. Tim grabbed for him, but it was too late; he'd already gotten the deadbolt unlocked, and the door was open. Jay was sprinting across the parking lot, pulling the mask out of his pocket and yanking it crookedly over his face as he ran. 

Calling his name, Tim followed. Jay was fast, but Tim could see that fumbling with the mask had slowed him down. Every step closed the distance between them by a few more inches. 

Jay hit the tree line, and Tim leapt for him, grabbing a handful of his jacket and sending him spinning off-balance. Tim hit the ground and felt grass instead of pavement, instead of the leaf litter of the forest floor. He could see Jay regain his balance out of the corner of his eye, and he yanked himself to his feet, sprinting across the clearing ( _clearing?_ ) to close the distance again. They collided, Tim wrapping his arms around Jay's chest like a vice as he felt the world rearrange around them. Jay wrenched sideways as they hit the ground--wet swamp now, like the edge of a lake--and Tim lost his grip, grabbing frantically for Jay's leg as Jay pulled himself away and to his feet. Jay tripped, sprawling forward, and Tim was sure this was his chance when he felt a blinding pain across his forehead, his left eye, his nose. Grabbing for his head instinctively, he lost his grip on Jay's ankle, and in the few seconds it took for Tim to process that _Jay had just kicked him in the face_ , Jay had already disappeared into the trees. 

Tim swore, wiping mud from his jeans as he pulled himself to his feet. The lake--a small one, not much more than a retention pond--provided a gap in the forest, and Tim could see the sky had turned from black to a dusky blue. Squinting through the trees on the opposite side of the lake, he could see lights and the distant noise of traffic. With a resigned sigh, he started his trek around the lake. 

By the time he reached the street, Tim thought his clothes had gotten marginally drier, though it was hard to tell with the humidity. He heard a buzzing at his ear and slapped at it. He didn't recognize this stretch of road, but he wasn't particularly concerned. He'd been through all this before. 

Caked in mud and dead-eyed, Tim stuck out a thumb. 


	4. HURTS

The driver insisted through a cracked window that Tim ride in the flatbed, and honestly, Tim didn't blame him. In lieu of air conditioning, the wind did a decent job cutting the heat of the blazing noon sun, but Tim could still feel the familiar prickle of a forming sunburn. He absent-mindedly pressed down on his exposed forearm and watched the pale handprint fade to pink. 

Tim pulled out his phone, squinting to see the screen through the glare of the sun. He could always wait to do this until he got back to the hotel, but he knew he should do it sooner rather than later. He pulled up Jessica in his contacts. 

Thumb hovering over the phone, he mentally rehearsed what he should type. The less, the better, he knew; he didn't want to involve Jessica any more than was absolutely necessary. ( _Any more than she'd already involved herself_ , a voice inside him scolded.) If his plan worked, she wouldn't need to know anything, but given his and Jay's track record with 'plans'--i.e. running half-blind into danger--he knew she'd need at least the bare minimum. She couldn't count on him. 

He finally started to type. 

"Keep an eye out the next few days. Creepy guy by my hotel room--" He backspaced. "--by my apartment last night. Might be a stalker. Doesn't seem dangerous, but keep an eye out anyway." 

Tim had several minutes of blissful silence before the phone buzzed. Tim groaned, though the sound was lost beneath the noise of tires on asphalt. He knew she'd have questions. 

"?????" 

He expected her questions to be a little more descriptive than that, but he could work with it. "Yeah," he typed back. A non-question deserved a non-answer. 

_Buzz._ "I haven't talked to you in like a year???" 

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. Before he could compose a reply--and how would he even respond to that?--the phone buzzed again. "What did he look like?" 

That he could answer. "Scrawny, avg height, brown sweatshirt w/ a hood. Might be wearing a black mask." 

There was a longer pause, and Tim had just enough time to hope that she was satisfied with his answer when he got another notification. 

"Describe the mask." 

No surprise at the mention of the mask, just a request for more detail. Tim chewed on his lower lip in absence of a cigarette. He hoped he was reading too much into it. 

He typed back. "Black fabric w/ picture of an eye on it." Before he could second-guess himself, he added a second text. "Why?" 

"Never mind," he got back almost instantly. Then, a few seconds later: "Thanks for the warning. I'll watch out." 

And that was that. Tim stared at the phone, but no further messages arrived. He squelched down the curiosity he could feel simmering at the back of his mind and closed his eyes for the rest of the trip. 

\--- 

He lit up as soon as he had the hotel room door locked behind him, as soon as he dug the battered box of cigarettes out of his laptop bag. Next came the laptop itself, at least seven years old and still holding up (and still able to run an outdated student version of Premiere). He didn't see an ethernet cable in the room, so he pulled the spare out of his bag. He hadn't needed to use the spare since he'd gotten one for his apartment, but he also hadn't been hotel-hopping since Jay. ( _Since 'Everything is fine.'_ )    

He unstrapped the chest cam and plugged it in, telling the computer to transfer all video to an external drive he'd brought with him. ( _Just in case._ ) 

He hadn't asked Jessica where she lived. If he could intercept Jay before he caused any trouble, she wouldn't need to know either of them had been there, and if she didn't know, he wouldn't have to deal with any more uncomfortable questions. 

Fighting the hotel room's painfully slow internet connection, he pulled up Rosswood on the map. Tim had always been good with maps, with diagrams, with taking something two-dimensional and imagining how it would look in three. He'd thought about studying engineering back in college, but the workload had been...unmanageable. (He'd also tried psychology, writing, philosophy, even music for a while, but nothing clicked. It was too much, too quickly, too "We're sorry, Timothy, but we can't grant you accomodations.") Tim squinted down at the roads that ran around the edges of the park, trying to recognize the one from that morning's video. He looked for small clusters of buildings along the roads, requesting pictures of the area when something looked promising. 

"Lily Villa Apartments". That was the one. That was the building Jessica had approached at the end of the night, right before the feed was cut. It was less than an hour from his old house--which made sense, since they used to go to the same doctor--but it was nowhere near the hotel. (His fault; he should have known they'd need to head back to Rosswood soon, but all he could think of while driving was the fear, the need to get as far away from the forest as possible.) The map estimated that it would be a two-and-a-half hour drive from the hotel. Tim stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. 

Laptop bag packed, he scanned the room to make sure he hadn't left anything. A familiar brown shape lying on the rightmost bed caught his eye. 

Jay's hat. 

Tim picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It looked the same as the one he'd seen Jay wear years back, and his mind started to stray to unwanted ( _stupid_ ) questions. What had happened to it when Jay died? Had it just stayed there, perched on top of his corpse, until that _thing_ saw fit to take him away? (And how did he know who had planted Jay's body in his room? It could have been the tall man, it could have been Alex, it could have even been _Brian._ ) All he knew was that it had been there, dripping blood and wearing that stupid hat, and then it had been gone. Now it was back, living and breathing and acting almost-but-not-quite like Jay, wearing the clothes Jay had died in. 

Tim put the hat on. 

He looked at himself in the mirror. 

He looked like an idiot. 

He was struck with a sudden idea. Pulling out his phone, he scrolled back to Jay's last message and composed one of his own. 

"Hey, Jay. Left your hat." 

Almost instantly, Tim's phone was buzzing, flooded with a mess of gibberish and missing characters. Finally, a string of intelligible messages: 

"DON'T" 

"DON'T DO THAT" 

"HURTS" 

Tim took a deep breath, made sure the hotel room key was in his pocket, and headed to the front desk to check out. 

\--- 

  He'd been driving for nearly two hours when Jessica called. Letting his cigarette fall from his fingers and down to the street, he switched hands on the wheel to answer. 

"Tim speaking." 

"We need to talk. You need to come over here, _now_ , and we need to talk." This was the most intense he'd ever heard her, the angriest he'd heard anyone but himself in months, and he cursed the part of him responsible for the increased heart rate, the edge of panic he felt constricting his lungs. 

He forced his voice to stay level, to sound disinterested. "Alright, sounds good. I'll be right over." 

She paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded suspicious. "I'm living in Lily Villa, unit thirty-five. Near the corner of Pine View and Jefferson." 

Tim let her talk, but he gripped the wheel painfully, hearing the blood rushing in his ears. He swerved back from the lane line. "Sure. I've been by that area before. Unit, uh...thirty-five, you said?" 

"Yeah, that's right." She still sounded wary. "See you soon?" 

"Soon as I can." 

The second she hung up, he threw the phone roughly into the passenger's seat. His hand finally free, he punched the ceiling. Again. Again. 

With a deep breath, Tim wrapped both hands around the wheel and kept driving. 

\---         

The sun was starting to set by the time he pulled into the too-familiar parking lot. 

Tim's hand hovered over the chest camera, debating whether or not to detach it. ( _Two days ago, this wouldn't have even been a question.)_ He struck a deal with his paranoia and hid the camera, still running, in his laptop bag, now slung over his shoulder. No video, but it would at least be able to capture audio without immediately looking suspicious. Locking the car carefully, he started for the apartment building. 

Unit thirty-five wasn't hard to find. It was on the third floor, fifth door over, but what Tim noticed first was that the door was still open, a red-brown streak across the entryway. 

"Jessica!" Tim rushed the doorway without thinking. 

Something sailed by his face, and he dodged, shoulder slamming painfully into the doorframe. He heard a small sound, a stuttered apology and-- 

There was Jessica, wide-eyed and hair askew, carrying a baseball bat. 

It took a few moments for Tim to put all the pieces together. "Did you..." he started. "Did you just try to _hit me_ with that thing?" 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry--" She twisted her hands on the handle of the bat but didn't let go. "I didn't know it was you, and I just saw the guy--the stalker--and--" 

"Wait, you saw him? Is he still here?" Tim backed up against the wall of the apartment, just inside the door. 

All at once, her expression changed. She sat up straighter, her eyes steely. "You know something about this, don't you?" 

"Well, yeah." Tim felt like he'd just been given whiplash, but he tried not to let on. Tried not to say too much. "He's been giving me trouble, too, like I said." 

"No, no, you know more than that." She brandished the bat, stepping back and away from him. "You knew he was coming to me next. You knew he was coming _tonight_." 

"It was just a _guess_! You're the only other person I know who lives nearby--" 

"Bull _shit_!" There was a loud _crack_ as one hand swung the bat backwards into the leg of a wooden chair, sending it skidding a few inches across the linoleum. Jessica either didn't notice or didn't care. "You said you moved away! I haven't seen you at the doctor's office in _years_!" 

"Maybe I found a different doctor!" 

"Or maybe you moved away, like you said. Maybe the reason the stalker targeted us has _nothing_ to do with how _close_ we live to each other." She reached into the pocket of her sweater and pulled out a familiar bottle of pills, rattling them for emphasis. "Maybe it has to do with these." 

" _Maybe_..." Tim could feel himself running out of steam, slumping back against the wall. He took his own bottle out of his pocket in acknowledgment. "Maybe...it does."  

"Look, Tim." Her expression softened, but only slightly. "I've been s-seeing things, I've got these--these _holes_ in my memory, and I'm getting _really_ sick of 'maybe'." 

Tim wouldn't--couldn't--meet her eyes, instead staring down at the tip of the bat, which he now realized was encrusted with something. Something familiar, something red-brown. 

"Jessica?" Tim couldn't keep the wavering fear out of his voice. His eyes strayed down to the carpet, where now he could see a trail of red-brown stains leading from the center of the living room to the door. "Was he...here? In this room?" 

"No," she said bluntly. 

"No?" 

"No, I'm not saying anything until you tell me what's going on." 

"God _dammit_ , Jessica! _"_ He pounded the wall behind him. "The carpet, the bat--Look, I know what bloodstains look like. Now, did you attack him, or didn't you?" 

"He was _in my apartment_!" The bat swung wide as she gestured. "What was I supposed to do? And I didn't--I was just trying to scare him off!" 

"Jessica." Tim schooled his tone into something much steadier than he felt. "What did you do to him?"  

"Okay..." She took a deep breath. "Okay. But if I tell you, promise me you'll tell me what's going on." 

Tim rubbed at his aching head, resisting the urge to slide down the wall and onto the floor. "It's--It's that the more you know, the more dangerous things get. I-I know somebody--several people--who learned that the hard way." 

Jessica stared at him, incredulous. "Are you--Do you think you're _protecting_ me?" 

Both hands were kneading at his forehead, covering his face, ( _safer this way_ ), scrubbing at his eyes. He was trying to protect her, fine, but clearly he was too late. Clearly what he'd done so far wasn't good enough. "Okay. Alright. I'll...try to answer any questions you ask me. As well as I can. But first, _what did you do to him_?" 

"Nothing, okay!" She held the bat in both hands again, rubbing at the handle nervously with a thumb. "It was--whatever happened, it was an accident. He was in here, in my living room, and he had this--this camera rolling, like you did the last time we saw each other. And he was just _there_ , staring at me, and he just kept taping me, and he wouldn't move, and he wouldn't _say_ anything, and I just...snapped." 

Tim's mind shot to the worst-case scenario: Jay's body, head caved in and dumped in the woods. Jay beaten, bones broken. Jay murdered again, just because Tim got the bright idea to warn Jessica he was coming. Tim was shaking. "Okay, you've got to elaborate on what 'just snapped' means here." 

"I didn't want to hurt him, I just wanted to hit that stupid _camera_ out of his hands. And I did, but I must have hit his hand or something, because there was so much blood, and..." She gestured to the carpet, looking lost. "And then he ran." 

"Wait." Tim took a breath to steady himself. "You said you knocked the camera _out of his hands_? Do you still have it?" 

Jessica gestured to the trash can in the kitchen, looking lost. "I tossed it out. It's...I bet it's a biohazard. I used gloves." 

Tim wasn't listening. He flipped open the top and reached inside, pulling the camera up and out with his bare hands. It was still slick with blood, and Tim could see (suppressing a dry heave) what looked like torn tissue, torn _skin_ , hanging from one side, pink and dripping. He stood there for a moment, frozen, letting it drip onto the linoleum, until Jessica shouted something about it being unsanitary and covered the floor with paper towels. He set it down gingerly on the paper. 

"We have to find him." Tim said in a hoarse half-whisper. 

"Okay, is he some kind of friend of yours? Because the way you've been talking--" 

"He's not--" Tim finally sank to the floor, next to the camera, next to the mess. "It's a long story." 

"I've got a long time to hear it." 

"No, you don't." Tim pulled himself back to his feet, leaning unsteadily on the counter. "He's not--I haven't seen him be dangerous. But things have changed--things were changing, right near the end, and I just--I think it's best if I keep an eye on him." 

"Do you think he's going after anybody else?" 

Tim shook his head silently, pulling out his phone. It pained him to do this so soon after Jay specifically told him not to, but he'd consider this an emergency. He pulled up Jay's number and sent him a message. 

"I have your camera. Where are you? I'm at Jessica's." 

Like before, he got a sequence of junk characters, indecipherable messages. There were more of them this time, and Tim had a moment of barely-suppressed panic. ( _What if he couldn't respond? What if that last message fried his brain? What if he's already dead?)_

Finally--and Tim let out an audible sigh of relief--a message in plain English. Well, as plain as Jay's messages could be. 

"HURTS" 

"LOST" 

"CAN'T SEE" 

"FIND ME?" 

Tim groaned and reluctantly composed another message. Jessica peered over his shoulder as he typed, and he let her.  

"Do you have any idea where you are in relation to Jessica's apartment? Anything at all." 

More garbled characters, but Jay chimed in fairly quickly this time. 

"TRIPPED AND FELL" 

"SOFT GROUND" 

"NO SOIL" 

"NOT FAR" 

"FOUND HIDING PLACE"  

Tim couldn't help but snort. "Sounds like he's still in the apartment building." 

Jessica looked over at him uneasily. "So, what do we do?" 

Tim shrugged. "Follow the blood, I guess." 

\--- 

After the past couple of days, tracking Jay from a trail of smudged bloodstains felt positively straightforward. The gaps in the trail were few and far between, and it rarely took more than a few seconds of squinting at the carpet to see where the trail picked up again. Tim absent-mindedly asked Jessica whether or not she thought the landlords would trace the mess back to her, and she looked at him like he'd just slapped her mother. She was still carrying the bat. Tim didn't say anything else for a while. 

Before long, they tracked the stains to a maintenance closet on the first floor, the worn metal door barely ajar. Tim shot Jessica a wary look and reached for the doorknob. She got the message, thankfully, stepping back and away. The last thing Tim wanted was for Jay to get spooked and run off, jumpy as he was. 

Tim opened the door slowly, the cheap LED flashlight he borrowed from Jessica barely lighting up the floor a foot in front of him. "Jay?" 

_There_. Curled up and shaking, Jay was pressed against the far corner of the closet, his arms wrapped over his head like the children Tim had seen in photographs of atomic bomb drills. 

"Hey, you're okay." Tim approached slowly, warily. "You're okay." 

Jay stirred, uncurling a bit and turning to face Tim, though his back was still pressed against the corner of the shelves. Tim's phone buzzed. 

"CAN'T SEE" 

"RECOGNIZE THE VOICE BUT CAN'T SEE" 

"VOICES CAN BE FAKED" 

Tim rolled his eyes. "Look, it's me, alright? I got your camera." 

Jay sat up straighter at that. It figured. 

"Fished it out of the garbage." Tim kept talking as he pulled the still-wet camera, now wrapped in a grocery bag, out of the laptop case slung over his shoulder. "Not sure if it still works, but you can give it a try." 

Jay reached out with a hand, grabbing at the air, and even in the dim beam of the flashlight Tim could see that it was bruised and bleeding. It curved unnaturally, some fingers looking more mobile than the others, and the brief glance Tim got at the torn and ragged palm was enough to make him force down a gag. 

Tim handed him the camera. 

Jay held it, turned it over, tried to turn it on. 

Tim's phone buzzed, but when he looked, there was only a string of empty characters. Jay pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, camera arm hanging limply at his side. 

"Is it dead?" Tim asked, hesitant. 

Jay nodded, the motion short and sharp. Even with the mask on, Tim could tell he wasn't happy. 

"You think another camera would work better?" Tim thought back to the chest cam, still running in his bag. 

Jay shook his head. 

"NEED TO CONNECT" 

"CAN'T ANYMORE" 

Jay passed the camera to his free hand, waving the injured hand for emphasis. Tim could see strips of wet flesh hanging off of it, clearly the remnants of whatever had been holding him to the camera.  

"Okay." Tim scrubbed at his face. "We can work with this. I can lead you back to the car or back to Jessica's place and--" 

As soon as the words left his mouth, Tim knew he'd made a mistake, but watching Jay recoil against the back of the closet just hammered it home even further. This is what happened when he spoke without thinking. This was why he needed to be careful. 

He'd said enough, though, that the smartest thing was probably to keep going. For all his lack of social graces, Jay had an annoyingly acute sense for when Tim was hiding something. 

Tim sighed. "I talked to Jessica. She's not going to attack you again, not unless you do something stupid." 

The phone buzzed. 

"DEFINE STUPID" 

Despite himself, Tim snorted out a half-laugh. "Don't hurt her. Don't _break into her apartment_. Don't upload her medical records to the internet. Y'know, the usual." 

  Jay slumped, rocking his head back in a way that made him look like a bad-mannered teenager. Tim could almost hear the " _Whatever_." 

Tim snorted again, quieter this time. "Okay, now I'm gonna put a hand on your arm, alright?" 

Jay nodded, and Tim gripped him softly by the upper arm, leading him out into the hallway. He could see Jessica staring at Jay, wide-eyed, but she didn't make a move to lift the bat. Small mercies. Tim gestured toward the staircase with a tip of his head and Jessica nodded, following after as Tim tugged lightly at Jay's arm to lead him toward-- 

It was there. 

It was standing at the end of the hallway. 

Tim felt like every atom in his body had separated, boiled away. His head screamed, and he felt himself tip forward, a numb hand grabbing for Jay's arm. He was on the ground. He was curled up, hidden. His hands were over his face. The lights burned his eyes. Someone was shouting. He was moving, not standing, but moving. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the girl, the bat, running, tripping, falling. The wallpaper was writhing like an anthill, dissolving around the edges of his vision. 

It reached out, and he recoiled, back, _away_. He peeked through a gap in his fingers. It touched the form next to him, picked it up, cradled it. Wrong, wrong, _wrong._ He brought his hands away from his face, squinting against the light, reaching up. He felt something on his shoulder, heard a high sound in his ear. The headache throbbed and faded, and the form was on the ground now, and he could _run_ and there were two, with three dragged and clumsy, up and around and inside, with the door closed behind. 


	5. interlude

Tim was in the woods. He was in the woods, with leaves crunching underfoot and branches swaying overhead, and something was wrong. It was a tension in his neck and shoulders, a formless anxiety; nothing concrete, like the coughing fits or the muscle spasms, just a feeling. Tim reached into the pocket of his jacket, thumb running over the ridged cap of his pill bottle. 

"How much farther d'you think it's gonna be?" Jay held the camera with a practiced ease, running his free hand across the back of his neck. 

"You know as well as I do." Tim shrugged, only half-listening. His mind was still trying to address the strange conviction that he was missing something. 

He stopped short. 

Jay must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye--surprising, given that his focus was directed at the viewscreen--because he turned, lens now fixed on Tim. "What?" 

"I think I--" Tim grasped for the words. "I think I'm missing time. Or something, I don't know, but I--" He gripped the pill bottle, still in his pocket. "I don't remember where we're supposed to be going. I mean, I know we're in Rosswood, obviously, but I don't know where _in Rosswood_ , and I don't know _why_." 

Jay looked up from the viewscreen then, fixing Tim with an odd stare. "I've been watching the screen, and I haven't seen any...distortion or anything like that." 

"Well, maybe you missed something." Tim was getting agitated, starting to pace. "Or maybe things can still happen without showing up on your _tapes_ , I don't know." 

Jay rocked his head back, looking momentarily offended, and went back to focusing on the viewscreen. He spoke to the picture he was watching, while the lens made eye-contact for him. "Or maybe it's not Rosswood. Maybe it's just, y'know. Whatever you've got...happening. With you." 

" _Maybe_ ," Tim bit back. Despite himself, he'd started to get used to Jay's tactless way of talking, the way he only seemed to catch himself once his foot was halfway down his throat. That familiarity was the only thing that kept Tim from knocking the camera away from his face. "Either way, I still don't now what the hell we're doing here." 

Jay stared at the screen, saying nothing. 

Tim took a deep breath. "So _tell me_." 

Jay furrowed his eyebrows, thinking. "Well, Alex said he'd meet me up ahead, so--" 

" _Alex_?" Tim advanced on Jay, grabbing a handful of his jacket, right below the neck. "Are you _fucking_ kidding me?" 

"No--no, wait." Jay blinked, looking away. "No, that's a different--" 

"So you're saying you don't remember either." 

"No, no, I've got it, I just--" He rubbed at his eye. "It wasn't Alex, it was the..." Tim released him, and he retreated a few steps backwards, camera pointed at his shoes. "There's a reason we're out here, I swear." 

"Probably," Tim said wryly. "But I'm guessing that's pretty much moot since neither of us remember what it is." 

"Yeah, I guess," Jay managed, leaning back hard against a tree. He swiped his free hand across his face, and Tim could see that the skin under his eyes looked irritated. "So what now? We just turn around?" 

"As long as the exit's that way, then yeah." Tim's fingers drummed against the bottle in his pocket, and he could hear the pills rattle inside. He couldn't remember whether he took one that morning or not. 

Letting out a distracted groan, Jay set the camera on the ground, scrubbing at both eyes with balled-up fists. 

Tim took a step closer. "You okay?" 

"Feels like I've got poison ivy," Jay muttered through gritted teeth. Tim could see his fists uncurl, and he started to dig into the skin. 

"Don't _scratch_ it." Tim batted his hand away. 

"Easy for you to say." Still, Jay went back to rubbing furiously at the skin. "It's like it's _in_ my eyes." 

"Yeah, probably 'cause you just put it there. That stuff _spreads_." 

"Yeah, _I know_ ," Jay snapped. He took his hands away, rolling his eyes back and blinking slowly. The skin around his eyes was red and puffy now, the eyes themselves bloodshoot, and Tim was suddenly reminded of the time he'd gotten pinkeye back in freshman year. As bad as that was, this looked worse. 

"You haven't got any allergies, right? Hayfever or whatever?" Tim asked cautiously. 

Jay squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyelids. "If I did, I _think_ I probably would've noticed by now." 

"Fair point." Tim was about to suggest they head back up the trail--he could drag Jay if he had to--when he caught sight of something smeared across the edge of Jay's hand. "Hey--hey, take your hand away for a sec." 

" _Why?_ " 

Tim took a step forward, hand grasping at air. "You've got something on your--" 

Jay cut him off. "If it's a rash, then yeah, I think I noticed." 

"It's not a--" Tim snagged his wrist, pulling it away from his face. It looked red, bruised and-- 

Oh. 

There was a dark smear of blood leading from Jay's right eyelid down his cheek, and he could see a lighter streak across the left side, just under the eye. 

"It itches, I just--" Jay tried to yank his hand back, but Tim held firm. He paused. "What?" 

"This is right," Tim said softly, voice catching in the back of his throat. "We're not--you're not..." 

Jay reached down and clumsily grabbed the camera, almost as a reflex. "Tim--Tim, talk to me. Should we be running right now?" It was more of a statement than a question, Tim's mind registered lazily. The tape started skipping, and Tim felt like if he tried to start running now, he wouldn't move an inch. 

"This didn't happen," Tim managed, as the edges of his vision blurred. "This isn't--this isn't happening, right now. None of this." 

"Tim, _is it here_?" 

Tim could see a fresh droplet of blood slide down Jay's face, and he didn't even seem to _notice_ , and a tiny part of him reminded him that this might just be another hallucination, while another part of him screamed that _this was it, this is what you were missing_. 

Tim blinked and squinted, but the trees didn't stop moving. "No, it's just us. This--all of this--it's just us." 

Jay wiped his free arm across his face, leaving a streak of blood across his sleeve. His eyes were closed, but he still lifted the camera, slowly, hesitantly. "I...I think I might get it." 

Tim snorted, despite himself. "Figures I'd dream about you getting yourself hurt." 

Jay managed a half grin, following Tim with the camera. "Sure, and it figures I'd dream about you being totally useless." 

_And it figures I'd dream about you thinking you're the one dreaming_. Tim wasn't sure if it made sense, but he decided that it didn't have to. This was far from the most disturbing imagery his sleeping mind had shown him, and if a little blood was the worst the night had to offer, he'd count himself lucky. 

"You're talking, though," Tim pointed out. 

"Do I not--?" Jay caught himself. "Oh. Yeah, that. This feels...not different, though, if that makes any sense." 

"It doesn't, but whatever." Tim couldn't remember the last time he'd had a lucid dream. He wondered if he could imagine himself a cigarette. 

Jay grinned lopsidedly, opening his mouth to say something, then stopped. He brought a hand up to his throat, wincing, then tried again. Tim could hear a soft noise, a whispering, a rasping. 

A buzzing. 


	6. forty days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 46 6f 72 74 79 20 64 61 79 73 20 61 6e 64 20 66 6f 72 74 79 20 6e 69 67 68 74 73 0a 54 68 6f 75 20 77 61 73 74 20 66 61 73 74 69 6e 67 20 69 6e 20 74 68 65 20 77 69 6c 64 0a 46 6f 72 74 79 20 64 61 79 73 20 61 6e 64 20 66 6f 72 74 79 20 6e 69 67 68 74 73 0a 54 65 6d 70 74 65 64 20 61 6e 64 20 79 65 74 20 75 6e 64 65 66 69 6c 65 64 0a 53 75 6e 62 65 61 6d 73 20 73 63 6f 72 63 68 69 6e 67 20 61 6c 6c 20 74 68 65 20 64 61 79 0a 43 68 69 6c 6c 79 20 64 65 77 64 72 6f 70 73 20 6e 69 67 68 74 6c 79 20 73 68 65 64 0a 50 72 6f 77 6c 69 6e 67 20 62 65 61 73 74 20 61 62 6f 75 74 20 74 68 79 20 77 61 79 0a 53 74 6f 6e 65 73 20 74 68 79 20 70 69 6c 6c 6f 77 2c 20 65 61 72 74 68 20 74 68 79 20 62 65 64 0a

LET US JOIN HANDS AND SING

NUMBER ONE TWENTY ONE

FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS

 

Φ (26, 1) (26, 1) . (21, 4) (5, 3) (5, 3) (3, 1) (1, 1) (5, 4)

Λ - (5, 4) (5, 3) . (10, 3) (26, 1) (2, 1) (1, 1) (5, 4) (1, 1)

 

(10, 3) (5, 2) (5, 3) (5, 4) (1, 4) (1, 1) (1, 2) (1, 3) (1, 4) (1, 5) (1, 4) (5, 4) (1, 3) (10, 3) (10, 3) (1, 4) (1, 2) (3, 2) (5, 2) (5, 3) (5, 4) (1, 4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4e 65 78 74 20 74 77 6f 20 63 68 61 70 74 65 72 73 20 76 65 72 79 20 73 6f 6f 6e 2e 20 0a


	7. USEFUL

A buzzing, next to Tim's head. He shifted, feeling the scratch of worn carpet against his unshaven face, and slowly, carefully opened his eyes. The room was dim, though thin bands of light streamed from the edges of the shuttered windows. This wasn't his apartment.

Not turning to look, he grabbed for his phone, swiped blindly at the screen.

"Hello?" he rasped.

"You sound like shit," the tinny voice in his ear responded.

Tim snorted, recognizing his boss's scratchy drawl. The man--Jimmy, he'd told Tim to call him--had thinning white hair and leathery skin, wore ratty black t-shirts with flaking designs Tim could only half make out, and looked like he'd been through hell and back on a Harley Davidson. He'd given Tim a light on a few bad days. He was okay. "Thanks," Tim mumbled through the swollen, cottony feeling in his mouth. "Any reason why you're calling?"

"Well, I was originally planning to see why the hell you didn't show up for your shift this morning--" Tim's chest constricted. It was Tuesday, wasn't it? "--but from what you sound like, I think I'd be madder if you came in."

Tim sputtered, trying to form an apology, but Jimmy cut him off.

"Don't want you giving whatever you've got to the others, and I don't want you coughing on the hot dogs. I've got public health breathing down my neck as it is. So you just stay home until you won't make us look bad, alright?"

Right. He'd called in sick yesterday, hadn't he? The memories slowly slotted back into place, though Tim's pulse still didn't drop down from fight-or-flight levels. "R-right," he managed.

"But not any longer." His tone was half-joking, but Tim could still hear the buried warning.

"Wouldn't want to, anyway," Tim tried to reassure him. "Need to pay rent."

Jimmy crowed with laughter at that. "You're a good kid, Tim. Now go...eat chicken soup or sleep or whatever the hell you gotta do to get better."

Tim snorted. If only. "I'll try."

"And I'll hold you to that," Jimmy teased, and the line went dead.

Tim set the phone down and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if he could just go back to sleep.

His phone buzzed.  

Guess not.

He rolled over on his side, picking up the phone with both hands and peering at it.

"WHO WAS THAT?"

Squinting through the dim light, he could just make out the shape of Jay, leaning on the armrest of a three-seater couch. (Right, Lily Villa. Jessica's place.) His battered camera lay on the floor closer to Tim, the screen unfolded and hanging at an odd angle. Jay cocked his head curiously as Tim pulled himself upright; he could probably hear the shuffling sound of sneakers on carpet.

"Just my boss," Tim said, a few notches louder than he'd been on the phone but not enough to disturb the neighbors. "I've probably got two more days until I'll have to come in."

Jay leaned further over the armrest, cocking his head again.

"He thinks I'm sick, and uh--" Tim stretched, and his muscles twinged in protest. He felt like he'd been dragged five miles behind a truck. "I wouldn't say he's wrong. You holding up okay?"

Jay nodded, and the phone at Tim's side buzzed.

"MAKES NO SENSE."

Tim squinted at him. "What doesn't?"

"FEEL GOOD. DOESN'T HURT." Jay slowly flexed his injured hand--and Tim couldn't see too well, but from a distance it looked less raw and red--before sending another message. "MAKES NO SENSE."

"Want me to take a look?"

Jay paused, then nodded.

Tim pulled himself to his feet, flicking on the wall switch and approaching Jay, who stayed perched on the couch. "Alright, I'm here. Hand?"

Jay held it out. No scabs, no raw skin, barely any scar tissue. Tim wouldn't call it good as new, but it looked significantly better than it should. Squinting and looking closer, Tim could see places where the skin was raised, less like a rash than like short, sparse hairs. He described what he saw as best he could.

"CAMERA?"

Tim looked down at him. "You said it wasn't working."    

"CAMERA."

With a sigh, Tim retrieved what was left of the camera from the floor, its screen detached and dangling by a pair of loose cords. It left a pink stain on the carpet.

Tim nudged Jay's shoulder with the lens, and Jay snatched it from him. He settled it into his injured hand and sat silently for a moment.

Suddenly, the camera hissed, spat sparks. Jay struggled for a moment before tossing it away across the couch, and Tim thought he saw something retreat back into the palm of Jay's hand. Jay huffed, barely audible.

"BROKEN."

"Was it already broken, or is that your fault?" Tim drawled, trying very hard not to think about what he'd seen slithering across Jay's palm.

Jay whipped his head around to face Tim, and even through the mask, Tim got the impression of an accusing glare.

"NEED A NEW CAMERA."

Tim snorted. "Sure. Let me just grab two hundred dollars out of my wallet."

Jay leaned forward. "NEED A NEW CAMERA."

Tim flung his hands wide. "Fine, you need it, but the fact is I can't afford it. Either you pay, or you're not getting one."

"BEING DEAD HAS NOT PAID WELL SO FAR."

Tim barked out a genuine laugh, despite himself. "Then, you're just gonna have to be suck it up until my next paycheck--maybe longer, since I'm missing so much time and all."

Jay huffed quietly with frustration.

Rolling his eyes, Tim reached into his pocket for the bottle of pills. His memories of the night before were fragmented, but if the faint buzzing in his skull told him anything, it was that he'd need to get some medicine into his system sooner rather than later. He was always more prone to smaller attacks after a major episode, even if that thing wasn't anywhere nearby.

He didn't feel the bottle.

Quickly, he tried his other pocket. The knife was still there, still folded in its case, but the familiar bulk of the pill bottle was absent.

Heart pounding, he rushed to his laptop bag, his knees hitting the floor hard. He pawed through it, hands shaking. Laptop, cords, papers, book, camera, no, no, _no_ \--

Tim jumped as he caught motion out of the corner of his eye. Silently, Jay slumped onto the floor next to him, tilting his head as he listened to the rustling of papers and the frantic scrape of fingernails on canvas. Tim spoke as he stacked the contents of the bag on the floor--laptop, cords, papers, book, camera--unzipping side pockets he hadn't used in years, turning the bag inside out and shaking. "They're gone. They're gone. They were in my pocket, I swear, and then they--"

He turned on Jay.

"I swear, if you know where they went--"

His phone buzzed. "WHERE WHAT WENT?"

"My pills, Jay! Did you or did you not take my pills?"

Jay shook his head furiously.

"DON'T NEED THEM."

Tim sat back against the wall of the apartment, breathing heavily, still gripping the bag hard. "Something--something happened last night, obviously, and now they're gone, and I don't--"

The pharmacy. They could refill his prescription, maybe even have it filled in a location nearby. (Near Rosswood.) Hand shaking, he frantically scrolled through his recent calls. Work, Jay, work, work, work, _there._

"Tim? You are telling me what the hell is going on _right now._ " Tim's head shot up to see Jessica emerging from the back of the apartment. She slammed the door behind her, eyes blazing and hair sticking out at odd angles.

"Five minutes," Tim managed, staggering to his feet and towards the door. He waved his phone by way of explanation and stumbled outside, squinting against the sunlight. He thought he could hear Jessica call his name as he closed the door behind him, leaning his back against it as it clicked shut. They can refill it. Everything's fine.

The phone rang twice before a computerized voice picked up, reading off his options. Press one to refill a prescription. Press two if you are a doctor prescribing a medication. Press three to speak to a pharmac--Tim pressed three.

"Hello, how may I help you?"

"It's Tim. Sorry, Tim Wright, and I've lost my medication, and I'd like to ask for a replacement. Or refill, or whatever." He winced.

"Date of birth?"

He told them.

"Tim Wright, you said?"

"Yes, ma'am."

There was a pause, just slightly too long, and Tim could feel his heart rate climb again.

She sighed. "We're sorry, Tim, but state law says we can only replace anticonvulsants like these once. It says here you've gotten a replacement bottle before, so that was your one shot. We can't do anything else without getting it in writing from your doctor, and there's no guarantee that your doctor will say yes."  

Tim hated the way his voice wavered, how it sounded so quiet. "If he does say yes, can--can he call you?"

"I’m afraid we need you to bring in a signed piece of paper, in person. That's the rule."

Tim swallowed, hard. "Okay. Sorry for the trouble."

"No trouble. Will that be all?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's all."

He hung up before she could reply.

An insistent knocking at the door jolted him to his feet. “Wait--just a second.” Shoving his phone in his pocket, he pushed the door open.

Jessica ushered him in, closing the door behind him. Once inside, she shot him an accusing glare. “What was that all about?”

“My meds, they’re gone,” Tim managed, trying to keep the desperate edge out of his voice. “I tried to ask for a refill, but the last time I lost them must’ve put me on a watchlist or something, because--”

Tim had an idea.

It was a _terrible_ idea.

It was also the only idea he had.

“No, uh, chance you have any extras, is there?”

“Extra what, extra--?” Her eyes widened in recognition, then narrowed. “You want me to give you my pills?”

“Look, we both went to the same doctor, we both had the same symptoms--”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything! I could’ve ended up with a totally different diagnosis. What if it’s just a coincidence?”

Tim snorted. “Doubt it.”

Jessica relented. “Yeah, I do, too.” She chewed at her bottom lip before continuing. “How much?”

“What?”

“How many pills?”

“Uh.” This was suddenly going much more smoothly than Tim had anticipated. “Maybe a day or two’s worth? I’m gonna have to head back to work pretty soon anyway, and then I can get the doctor’s note and jump through all the other hoops they set up to stop me from becoming a drug dealer or whatever.”

“So you’ve made me the drug dealer instead.” Jessica said it with a straight face, but Tim could hear the humor in her voice.

Tim managed a lopsided grin. “Guess so.”  

Jessica stepped toward the bathroom, and Tim could see reflections dance off the walls as she opened the mirrored medicine cabinet. “Two days’ worth?”

“Yeah, that should be fine.” Tim shifted uncomfortably, leaning against the doorframe of the neighboring room (her bedroom, he guessed). “Unless that’s actually cutting into what you need to finish out the month, because--”

“I’ve got extras, it’s fine.” Jessica started to walk back toward him, pill bottle in hand, but she paused.

“What’s up?”

She gripped the bottle tighter. “Tim, I need answers.”

_Oh god._ Now they were bartering. This had stopped being a favor and had become an exchange, and that made the whole thing feel dirtier. Tim could feel himself withdrawing, shoulders hiking up higher. “Ask away.”

“What _was_ that thing last night?”

Tim inhaled. He shouldn’t have been surprised. His memory of the night before was spotty at best, but given that and the familiar pounding in his head, he could put two and two together. “We don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Well, that’s what I’ve got!” Tim wrapped his arms around himself. “It shows up, and things go wrong. You lose your memory. Sometimes--sometimes, you get violent. It messes with your head _somehow_ , but we don’t know how or why or--” Tim cut himself off. “Anyway, the pills...they help, so that’s why I need--”

Tim reached out for the bottle, and she yanked it out of his reach. “Two days’ worth.”

“ _Yes._ ”

Keeping an eye on him, she tipped four circular, blue tablets into her hand. Slipping the rest of the bottle into the pocket of her sweater, she handed him the tablets. “Two at a time, once per day.”

Tim looked down at the pills in his hand. Clearly this was a different brand, probably a different medication altogether. “And these _are_ anticonvulsants, right?”

“Yeah. They’re the first ones that worked for me.”

Tim nodded sympathetically. He tipped two tablets into his mouth and swallowed dry.

“Jesus.” Jessica stared, the dark circles under her eyes even more pronounced in the low light at the edge of the living room. “I could’ve gotten you a glass of water.”

Tim shrugged and headed for the living room couch, slipping the remaining two pills into his pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Jay poring over the junk Tim pulled out of his bag, camera in hand.

_Tim’s camera in hand._

“Hey!” Tim scolded, clapping his hands. ( _That’s_ Jay _, not some animal._ )

Jay jolted at the sound and sat up straighter, tilting the chest camera up at Tim.

Tim approached, trying to suppress the fury he could feel bubbling under his skin. “Who told you you could have that?”  

His phone buzzed. “NEEDED IT.”

“That’s not an answer, Jay.”

_Buzz._ “YOU WEREN’T USING IT.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just take it and-- _”_ Tim didn’t know exactly what happened when Jay attached himself to a camera, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

“I WAS USELESS BEFORE. USEFUL NOW.”

“Look, I don’t care if you’re _useful_ , I care whether or not you’re _breaking my stuff._ ” It sounded childish, and Tim knew it, but Jay wasn’t _listening_.

“NOT BROKEN.”

“Oh, really?” It came out on a dark laugh. “So you’re saying you can just...disconnect yourself and it’ll work fine.”

“YES.”

“Then give me back my camera.”

“NO.”

_Goddamnit, Jay_. “And why’s that?”

Jay curled around the camera protectively. “NEED TO OBSERVE, RECORD. CAN’T RECORD WITHOUT A CAMERA.” He paused, and the phone buzzed again. “NOT SURE IF THESE THOUGHTS ARE MINE. AFRAID TO FORGET.”

Tim sighed. “Look, if...when we find you another camera, will you give mine back?”

Jay nodded.

“Alright.” Tim slumped in defeat. “You can keep the chest cam for now.”

Jay perked up. Tim imagined he was smiling under the mask, with that weird, lopsided grin he got sometimes. “THANK YOU.”

“Alright, sure.” Tim shifted, crossing his arms. This was a terrible idea, but it wasn’t the first one they’d had that morning. (Was it even morning? The glare between the blinds made it look more like afternoon.) A thought struck him. “Hey, Jay, I got something for you.”

Tim reached down near the front door, near where he’d woken up that morning, and picked up Jay’s hat. He shook the dust off and gave it a once-over before handing it back to Jay.

One hand gripping the brim, Jay slid the hat on over his mask. After a moment he dipped his head, took it off, and readjusted the band. “WERE YOU WEARING THIS?”

Tim rubbed absent-mindedly at his throat. “Kept the sun out of my eyes.”

Jay made a quiet noise, a nearly imperceptible snort, and replaced the hat. He turned the camera back to the sheets of lined paper spread out across the carpet in front of him.

Tim squinted down at them. Two of them looked blank, while the third was marked with what looked like permanent marker. “Where’d you get these?”

“THEY WERE IN YOUR BAG.”

Tim kneeled down to get a closer look. “Well, they’re not mi--”

“Wait.” Jessica’s voice cut him off. Tim jerked back in surprise, and he could see she was still standing at the far edge of the living room, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed. “That’s…”

“That’s what?”

She uncrossed her arms to point across the room. “That’s _Jay_?”

Oh. _Oh_. Tim hadn’t properly introduced them, had he? He leaned back, sitting uncomfortably on the thin carpet. He’d called Jay by his name, and she’d heard. It wasn’t like he could get out of explaining it at this point. “Yep,” he managed.

“Your _friend_ Jay.” She continued to point, staring directly into Tim’s eyes in a way he found uncomfortably familiar. “The Jay you said moved out of town.”

Tim nodded stiffly. “Yep.”

“The Jay who went to the same doctor’s office we did.”

“Same one.”

Jessica’s intense stare softened, just slightly. To Tim, she silently mouthed, “ _What happened to him?”_

Jay’s head might not have been facing her, but his camera was, and Tim could tell he understood her from the way he leaned forward, alert. One hand on the wall for balance, he pulled himself out of a crouch and started toward her desk, toward her _computer_ \--

He didn’t turn the laptop on.

Instead, he motioned Jessica over, pointed to the worn pair of upright speakers that sat on either side of the computer, and then pointed to his ear under the mask. He waited.

“You...want me to hear something?” Jessica ventured.

Jay nodded.

The speakers crackled to life with a roar of static. It cut off abruptly with a familiar shout, warped and fractured. “ _I’ve done everything to keep this under control! Everyone is dead!”_ The voice was interrupted by a quick _hiss-pop_ and a low, warped dial tone. Over the tone, Alex continued, “ _If I hadn’t done something, it would have--”_ The speakers squealed, obscuring the rest. Eventually the noise died down, replaced by Jay’s own voice, grainy and indistinct. “Alex? ... _Alex?_ ”

The crack of the gunshot was louder than Tim remembered. He curled further into himself, arms crossed, digging his nails into the meat of his arms.

Above him, Jessica looked at the speakers and then at Jay, brow furrowed with concern. “What am I hearing? How are you…?”

Jay shrugged.

Jessica glanced over at Tim, clearly expecting something more descriptive. Tim lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug of his own, arms still crossed. “Best not to question it,” he mumbled, unsure if it was loud enough for her to hear.

Jessica’s sigh hissed out through her teeth. “Okay, fine, but am I supposed to be getting something from this? Who’s Alex? That guy said ‘everyone’ was dead--who’s everyone? What happened?”

The speakers hummed for a moment before Jay’s voice cut in again. “-- _the director, Alex. Alex Kralie. Do you remember anything?_ ”

“Alex K--” Jessica jolted, turning to Jay. “Wait, Amy’s boyfriend? Amy Walters?”

Jay nodded.

Her voice climbed, increasingly frantic. “What happened to him? Is Amy okay?”

Before Tim could say anything, the speakers crackled. “ _Everyone is dead! Sarah, Seth, Jessica, Amy, Brian, Jay, and now you!_ ”

Through the haze of suppressed panic, Tim winced. _Dammit, Jay._

Tim could see Jessica, expression blank, mouthing the words: _Sarah, Seth, Jessica, Amy._ _Sarah, Seth, Jessica, Amy._

“So she--” Her voice broke. “I thought she just--just couldn’t pay rent, so she told me...” Jessica paused, her stare boring holes in the carpet. “I can’t remember what she said.” Finally, she looked up at Tim, face flushed and eyes noticeably redder. “Tim, I _can’t remember what she looked like._ ”

“That’s…” Tim uncrossed his arms, tried to choose his words carefully. “That happens, sometimes, with people like us. You’re not the only one, if that helps any.”

“So, she’s dead.” Jessica said, voice flat. “She went missing and I forgot her and now she’s dead.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tim added weakly.

“What happened?” Her dark-ringed eyes were wide, pleading. “Just tell me what happened.”  

“I don’t know for sure.” Tim stifled a cough before continuing. “But Alex was...dangerous. That’s his voice you just heard, on the, on the recording.”

“Wait, did _Alex--_?”

“Yeah.” Tim could feel his blunt nails digging into the fat of his palm. “Pretty sure he did. But now he’s gone, so we don’t--” Tim had to take a breath, still himself. “We don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“On the recording…” He could see the wheels turning in her head, could see her looking over at Jay and wondering how much he knew, how he managed to use her speakers. “Alex said I was dead, too. What if--”

“She’s _gone_ , Jessica.” Tim cut her off, thinking back to a crumpled photograph, to thumbs pressing into his windpipe.

“Are you _sure_?” Jessica stared him down, eyes wild. “Did you see the body? Did the police get involved?”

( _“When you killed Amy, did you feel like you were in control then?” It was a gamble, something to make him react, and he_ **_did_ ** _, grip falling slack just enough for Tim to--)_

“Well, _no_ , but--”  

“He said Jay was dead. He said _I_ was dead. That’s two he’s wrong about. Why not three?”

“Sure.” Tim deflated. Not worth it to keep fighting, not when he couldn’t give her the evidence she wanted. “Why not three.”

Jessica took a deep, slow breath, leaning back against the wall. Closing her eyes, she repeated herself. “So Alex thought I was dead.”

“He did.” Tim nodded. “Safest that way.”

“So he wanted to kill me, too.”

“He wanted to kill a lot of people.” Tim pulled the lighter out of his pocket, flicked the lid open and closed.

“So he missed me, he missed you, and he missed Jay.”

Jay shook his head. Jessica startled at a buzz in her pocket and took out her phone. She looked at the message, and then at Jay.

Tim snorted. “Yeah, he does that, too.”

“Okay, fine, but this doesn’t make sense.” Jessica squinted at the screen. “He says Alex didn’t miss.”

Tim rubbed at his neck, scratching at what felt like a mosquito bite. He cleared his throat. “Alex did a number on him. But, uh.” He glanced over at Jay, who had the camera fixed directly on Tim’s face. “He got out fine.”

Another quiet snort from Jay, and Tim could see the screen of Jessica’s laptop flicker behind her, displaying a couple quick frames of white text on black background. “Everything is fine.”

Tim snickered, catching himself when he saw Jessica staring.

“So.” Jessica paused, chewing at the inside of her cheek. “Alex is…definitely dead?”

_A knife cutting through flesh like raw meat, wheezing from a punctured lung, blood on his hands, blood in his hair._

“Yeah,” Tim managed. “Saw the body. He’s...he’s dead.”      

“And we’re here. We’re fine.” Jessica wrapped her arms around herself. “Then what’s next?”

Jay crouched down again, pawing through the small pile of papers spread across the carpet with his free hand, before holding up the one with permanent marker.

Jessica drew closer, bending down to see. “Jay, did you...write this?”

Tim shook his head before turning to Jay. “You said these were in my bag, right?”

Jay nodded, holding the marked paper out to Tim again. Tim took it gently, setting it down on the carpet in front of him and smoothing out the creases with the heel of his hand. No pictures and no charcoal smears, not like the papers he and Jay had found in Alex’s old house. Just words and numbers, written in--

Tim froze.

“Jay?” His voice cracked, but Tim had worse things to deal with, like the heat he could feel prickling at the corners of his eyes. “Jay, you didn’t write this.” It came out as more of a statement than a question, which he guessed it was. Tim knew what he saw. He just wanted confirmation.

Jay shook his head before tilting it forwards, lifting the camera from the paper to Tim’s face.

Tim didn’t look at the lens. It felt too much like eye contact.

His mouth worked a few times, shifting the words before he said them. Jay nudged him lightly with his foot.

“This is…” Tim lifted the paper in a shaking hand, holding it so Jay could catch it on camera. “This is Brian’s handwriting.”

“Brian…” Jessica muttered, furrowing her brow. “That’s one of the names from the recording, wasn’t it?”

“But Brian _is_ dead.” Tim pulled himself to his feet, leaning against the wall for support, trying to shout down the prickling need to _run, hide, get away_. “He fell.”

_A loud crack against the concrete. (Good riddance, you sick bastard.) YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT, scrawled across the mirror._  

Tim continued, “I _saw_ his body, he--”

Jay, still crouched on the floor, tapped at Tim’s leg.

“ _What_ , Jay?” Tim snapped.  

Jay pointed at himself.

Tim stared.

The phone in his pocket buzzed twice.

“PUT BACK TOGETHER?”

“What’d he say?” Jessica was visibly curious, but she held back, like Tim was something dangerous.

“He…” Tim took a moment to straighten out his thoughts, running a hand through his hair and gripping hard. _Too much. Just say what she needs._ “He’s thinking maybe Brian’s okay. Alex got to him, but...maybe he got better.”

“Like Jay did?” Jessica looked to Tim for confirmation.

“Basically.” Tim coughed through the aching tightness in his throat, thinking about the mottled skin, the scars across Jay’s face. He wondered if the bullet left a mark.

“So, what’d Brian write?” Jessica glanced down at the page, still giving Tim a wide berth.

Tim slid back down the wall, kneeling so he could reach the paper. Jay huddled in close, peering over Tim’s shoulder with the camera.

_LET US JOIN HANDS AND SING_

_NUMBER ONE TWENTY ONE_

_FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS_

After that came a series of paired numbers. Tim’s mind flicked back to high school geometry.

“It’s…” Tim bit back a sigh. “It’s a code.”

Visibly steeling herself, Jessica finally got closer, reaching for the page. “Lemme see.”

Tim started to hand it to her, but Jay reached out and stopped him with his free hand. _Something he didn’t want Jessica to see?_

Turning the camera to navigate, Jay reached for Tim’s laptop bag and pulled out a tattered hardcover. He lifted a finger as if to say, “This first.”  

Tim peered at it. Nothing rang a bell. Taking it from Jay, he started to flip through it, noticing what looked like staff lines.

His phone buzzed. “HYMNAL. NOT YOURS?”

Tim snorted. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the inside of a church. (Or he could, barely. His mom had been with him. He remembered scratchy shirts and pressed pants and songs he didn’t know but was supposed to.)  

“THOUGHT SO.”

Jessica shuffled around behind Jay, trying to get a better look. Hearing her, Jay tilted his head before taking the page from Tim and handing it to her. _Guess he didn’t want to hide it from her after all._ Tim watched as she started to pace, focused intently on the code.

_Buzz._ “TRY 121”

Tim paged forward in the hymnal, watching the bold numbers at the corner. 100, 118, 125--he flipped back.

With Jay’s camera perched over his shoulder, he glanced at the first line of lyrics.

_Forty days and forty nights, thou wast fasting in the wild._

He couldn’t help the small grin that crept across his face. Over his shoulder, he heard an odd sniffling sound that could have been laughter.

Tim tilted his head to look into the lens of Jay’s camera. “Got it in one.”

“HAD PRACTICE.”  

“Wait.” Jessica said from above them. Tim’s head jerked up to look at her, and Jay’s camera followed. “These symbols, the Greek ones--”

She bent down, turning the paper so they could see.

“This is weird, but when I was younger--like, in college younger--I had a couple years where I was really into geocaching.” At Tim’s confused expression, she continued. “Like, hiking, but with puzzles. It’s sort of like a treasure hunt, where the clues give you sets of coordinates. Then you hike out to those coordinates, and there’s a cache--like, all the ones I saw were little boxes. They always had a book to write your name in, but sometimes they had more clues.” She smiled wryly. “One time I got an expired candy bar.”

“So you’ve got some experience with codes is what you’re saying.”

“Well, yeah, but no, that’s not--” She pointed to the symbols at the head of two lines of coordinate pairs: φ and λ. “Okay, that’s phi and that’s lambda, right?”

Tim tried to remember back to a semester and a half of freshman-level engineering. “Alright, sure.”

“But when you’re talking about maps, that’s latitude--” She pointed to the first symbol. “--and that’s longitude.” She pointed to the second.

“So we’re dealing with maps.”

“That’s my guess, at least.”

Two phones buzzed at once. “GOOD GUESS.”

Jessica grinned.

Tim squinted down at the page. “I keep thinking we’re gonna need graph paper. Like, we need to draw all the points like we’re using a...coordinate plane or something.”

Jay pointed at the hymnal.

Tim rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know the song’s important somehow. Maybe if we hold the grid with the marks up to the song? Or a map?” He shrugged. “Look, that’s what I’ve got.”

Jay motioned with his free hand in a gesture that read to Tim like a dismissive, “I guess.”

Tim glanced up at Jessica. “Got any graph paper?”

\---

Three hours later, and the graph paper had been abandoned in favor of another system. Jay had noticed that the pairs could mean (word, letter) in the hymn lyrics instead of (x, y) on a coordinate plane, landing them with two strings of letters they hadn’t decoded and one string they had: “EIGHT FORTY THREE TONIGHT”

Jay had lifted a smug thumbs up at that discovery.

Tim begrudgingly allowed him his victory.

It was Jessica who pointed out that the strings that followed each Greek symbol could mean numbers instead of letters, sticking with her map theory, and it was Jay who assigned a number to each based on its position in the alphabet.

Tim, meanwhile, had stepped onto the patio for a smoke, since he clearly wasn’t doing them any good inside. He tried not to think about the “History of Cryptography” class Brian had taken senior year to bump his GPA. He tried not to think about the echoing thud of a body hitting the ground.

Cigarette extinguished, Tim rejoined the other two. The three of them finally punched the resulting latitude and longitude values into a map online with Jessica’s laptop, and--

“Rosswood.” Tim sat back hard against the back of the desk chair. Behind him, he could hear Jessica sigh with relief.

Jay reached over Tim to take the mouse, zooming in closer. The exact coordinates pointed to a property running up against the park that housed a church--nondenominational Christian. It was a narrow, white-washed building with a high steeple, and despite the old-fashioned style, every photograph made it look newly painted.

A quick search turned up an article from a local news site dated two years prior. Apparently, the church had been around for nearly eighty years before a “tragic, unexpected” fire reduced the modest building to a collection of crumbling, heat-scarred brick. The article credited it to faulty wiring and mentioned plans to rebuild on a plot of land next to the wreckage.

Jay nudged Tim. Tim nodded.

Tim glanced at the clock and swore, scrambling to his feet. It was just past seven, and Brian (not Brian, not anymore) had said eight forty-three. That left them barely an hour and a half to get down there. Something caught in his throat, and he bent double, letting out a wheezing cough.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Jay checking the windows. Jay wasn’t running, so he guessed that was a good sign.

Jessica, instead, was staring at Tim. “Hey, get under the light a little.” She gestured at the light fixture mounted to the ceiling. Rubbing at his aching throat, Tim obliged.

“Look up.” She lifted his hand away, peering in for a closer look. “Oh. Oh wow.”

“What?” Tim’s eyes were still fixed on the ceiling. He scratched at his arm, trying not to think about what “ _oh wow”_ could mean. He thought he heard Jay get up from the desk to join her.

“Do you get hives often?”

No, no, Tim didn’t. He scratched at his throat, suddenly aware of how hot the skin had gotten. To his hand, it felt like a sunburn, but to his neck (and, he slowly realized, his shoulders and chest), it itched like hell. He bit back another cough.

Jessica started to fret, asking about the chair, asking him if he was allergic to any detergents, mentioning she hadn’t dusted in a while--

She paused.

“Are you allergic to any _medications_?”

“Well, yeah, some, but--” Tim wheezed. “That when I was back being treated for the, the--” He cut himself off. “Not any anticonvulsants I know of.”  
  
“Not any you _know of,”_ Jessica scolded.

“ _Yes_ , I’m probably allergic to your meds!” Tim shouted through the burn in his throat. “Is that what you wanted me to say?”

“Yeah, basically!”

“And _yes_ , I shouldn’t’ve--” Another cough. _Not now, not now._ “--The pills, I shouldn’t…”

The way Jessica was looking at him reminded Tim uncomfortably of pity. “Should I call 911?”

“No.” Tim pulled himself upright, breathing heavily. “No, I’m…This is fine. I’m not...We’re not gonna make it in time if we have to deal with the hospital.”

“Yeah, but--” Jessica sputtered. “What if you start choking?”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Tim was already heading for the door. “Doesn’t--” Another cough. “--Doesn’t seem like it’s getting any worse.”

“Bullshit.”

Tim ignored her. “Jay, you coming?”

Jay nodded, starting for the door, but Jessica caught him by the arm.

“Tim, you’re not _driving_ like that!”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Tim snapped. “Jay’s _blind_ , if you hadn’t noticed!”

She looked up at Jay’s masked face, startled. _Guess she hadn’t._ _Somehow._ Not releasing her grip on Jay’s arm, she shot a glare at Tim. “Say I drive you to the church.”

“Say you do.”

“Say we get there by eight forty-three.”

“Say we do.”

“What happens then?” She gestured wide, accidentally shaking Jay in the process. He held the camera steady. “We trespass on private property and get shot? That... _whatever_ shows up again?”

“ _Look._ ” Tim rounded on her, face burning hot from more than just the hives. ”Brian wanted us to see something, and whatever it is, we need to be there at eight forty-three to see it, and if there’s a _chance_ he’s still alive, I can’t just--!” His voice cracked, sending him into another coughing fit. The muscles across his stomach ached from the strain. _That’s what you get_ , a voice inside him scolded. _You said too much._

Jessica’s expression hardened. “Okay.”

Tim gripped the doorframe and pulled himself upright. (His hands felt _off_ , swollen.) “Okay, what?” he snapped.

“Okay, I’m driving.” She yanked her purse down from a hook on the wall, drawing out a ring of keys. “Just don’t die, and don’t get us killed.”

Tim let out a breath that was almost a sigh, trying to keep the relief off his face. Leaning heavily against the doorframe, he managed a crooked salute. “Yes ma’am.”

The punch she landed on his shoulder felt strangely satisfying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET US JOIN HANDS AND SING  
> NUMBER ONE TWENTY ONE  
> FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS
> 
> Φ 33.277168  
> Λ -87.534686
> 
> eight forty three tonight


	8. eight forty-three

Jessica pulled the car over to the side of the road at eight fifteen. With a wary glance over at Tim in the passenger’s seat, she finished off the last few bites of a granola bar and crumpled the wrapper in the cup holder. 

She’d shoved the granola bars into each of their hands before they left the apartment, insisting that they had to eat something if they were going to skip dinner. Tim had managed about two bites before giving up; it burned like sandpaper when he swallowed. Jay’s wrapper was still unopened. 

Jay unlatched the back door and clambered out before Jessica had shifted into park. Tim was next, waiting until the keys were out of the ignition. With the door closed behind him, Tim leaned heavily against it and pulled out his phone. Brian’s coordinates were still in the search bar along the top of the map application, but Tim refreshed the results to be sure. He zoomed in closer, bringing the phone itself up to his face so he could see more clearly. The coordinates didn’t point to the church, not exactly. They pointed to a spot just behind it. 

The car horn blared, and Tim jumped back. Next to him, he could see Jay clutching the tiny chest camera at an odd angle, his narrow shoulders hunched. 

Jessica rounded the front of the car, key ring jingling in her hand and head ducked with embarrassment. “Sorry! It always does that when I lock it.”

Tim shrugged. “Not like the element of surprise ever did us any good before.”

“At least I didn’t pull us into the parking lot.”

“Yeah.” Tim rubbed at the raw skin just under his collar. He could hear an unfamiliar rasp in his voice as it scraped across his swollen throat. “That’s something at least. You really think this place still has people around this late?”

“Better safe than sorry. Or arrested. Or shot.” She dropped the keys into her purse and slung it back over her shoulder. “So, what do you think we’re looking for?”

“Not sure.” Shoving the phone back in his pocket after a last look at the map, Tim set off toward the church. “Whatever it is, map says it’s out back, behind the building.”

A cool breeze cut through the humid air. Jessica shivered. “And you’re sure Alex is--?”

_“Yes.”_

“Anyone else we should be...worried about?”

“Besides him?” Tim jerked a thumb toward Jay, and Jay stopped, tilting his head in a way that read to Tim as _“Really?”_ The phone buzzed, but Tim left it alone. “Just that thing you already saw.”

“Okay.” Jessica grew quiet, focusing on the grass by the side of the road as she walked. 

The small sign out next to the church driveway came into view as they walked, barely legible in the moonlight. 

“YOUTUBE AND HAVE FUN FOR A MOMENT

YOU PRAY AND HAVE GOD’S LOVE FOREVER”

Jay snorted softly. 

Tim rubbed at the lighter in his pocket--anything to keep himself from scratching at his neck. Leaning against the sign, he peered through the dim moonlight at the parking lot, barely able to discern the outline of a car parked close to the church doors. “We should probably stick close to the treeline, just in case whoever owns that car is still hanging around.” He waited for a response from Jessica. Hearing nothing, he turned back. 

She stood several paces behind, staring into the woods. Her arms were rigid at her sides.

“Jessica,” Tim hissed. _“Jessica.”_

She blinked, her posture falling into a more natural slump. 

“Sorry, I just--” She held out her hands, placating. “It’s nothing.” 

Like hell Tim wanted to go through this again. “You see something?”

“Yeah, I guess, I--” She ran her hands through her hair, wincing at the snags. “I’m not sure. I thought I saw something moving out there, but when I looked, I didn’t...Really, it was probably nothing.”

Tim snapped the lighter open and closed, unthinking. “If it’s nothing, okay, fine, it’s nothing. If it’s  _ something, _ it might be something dangerous, in which case,  _ yeah, _ we should know about it. And if it keeps being nothing, then I...look, I’ve got experience with that. We’ve  _ both _ got experience with that.”

Jay whipped his camera around to face Tim. It felt like a glare. Tim ignored him. 

_ “Okay,” _ Jessica snapped. “Look, I don’t know what I saw, alright? It was just--just movement, out of the corner of my eye.” 

“Alright.” Tim clicked the lighter shut. “So there’s something moving out there.”

“Something,” Jessica conceded, shoving her hands into the pockets of her sweater. 

“Yeah, something.” Tim didn’t even know why he said it. Maybe he was just immature enough to want the last word. Maybe the other two were just grating on his nerves. Maybe it was finding himself back in Rosswood for the second time in one week--middle of the night, no camera, and a windpipe so swollen he’d started to wheeze.

He took a breath as best he could. Clicked the lighter open, closed. He couldn’t light up out here. He remembered January, second semester sophomore year, huddled against a brick wall after Intro Music Theory with a cigarette in his shaking hands.  _ Not now. _ The lit cigarette had fallen from his fingers, hitting a pile of dry leaves the wind had gathered up against the side of the building. There was smoke for a few seconds, and then he could see an orange glow crawl across the first few leaves. He’d stamped at it furiously, and the fire had guttered and died under his shoe. 

Not so easy out here. 

_ Alright, Smokey Bear, back to business. _ He shoved the lighter back into his pocket. “The coordinates pointed out back, so we should be able to follow the edge of the property around here.” He pointed in a vague arc, following the tree line. 

Jessica nodded stiffly, eyes flicking back to where she’d been looking before. 

Jay started forward, motioning the other two to follow. He held the chest camera up awkwardly; the thing looked too small to be a proper camera and too large to hold out like that without getting a cramp in your arm. Tim wondered if all that camerawork built up any muscle in Jay’s dominant arm. (If it did, it didn’t show under all those layers.)

The treeline didn’t follow a smooth line like Tim expected. Once they got around behind the church, it cut back at an angle, exposing an overgrown lot. Tim squinted into the darkness. 

“Jay?” Tim called. Jay twisted around to face him, camera at the ready. “That thing doesn’t have a night vision setting, does it?” 

Jay stood still for a moment before shaking his head ruefully. 

“Thought so.” Tim glanced back at the windows of the church. All dark. He hoped this idea wasn’t as dumb as it felt. “Hey, Jessica, you still have that flashlight?” 

He couldn’t completely tell, dark as it was, but she looked antsy. “Yeah, but I’m not really sure how much it’ll help.” She pulled the small cylinder out of her purse and pressed her thumb against the button on the end. With a click, it lit up. 

When his eyes adjusted, Tim could see Jessica looking over her shoulder, back at the church. 

“See anybody?” 

“No, just…” She swept the flashlight across the grass. “Just making sure.”

Tim glanced back. Nothing, like she said. He gestured toward the flashlight in her hand. “Didn’t happen to bring a spare, did you?” 

In the dim light, he could see her wrinkle her nose. “Why would I bring a spare? Why would I even  _ have _ a spare?”

“Sorry.” Tim curled in on himself, just slightly. “Thought I’d ask.”

“I mean, I’ve got the flashlight setting on my phone, but--”

_ Oh, right. _ “Better than nothing.” Tim lit up his phone, holding it out in front of him. He couldn’t tell the difference unless he pointed it directly at the ground. “Sort of.” 

She shot him a pitying look. “So, what’re we looking for?” 

_ (“He died here slowly because of you.”) _

With his free hand, Tim kneaded at his forehead. “Not--not sure. But whatever it is, it’s time-sensitive.”

“You think the guy, I mean, Brian wants to meet us?”

_ (YOUR FAULT.)  _

“That’d--” Tim coughed, small, feeling more like a smoker’s cough than the wheezing, drowning panic he associated with this place. “That’d be nice, yeah. Though I guess with the way he was, it’s probably not that simple.”

“Like, with the code?” Jessica ventured. 

“Yeah,” Tim managed hoarsely. “He did that a lot.”

Silence. Leaves crunching underfoot. As they approached, Tim could make out strange shapes in the lot behind the church, taller than a man. (Taller than that thing.) 

“I don’t want to pry,” Jessica started.  _ (But you’re going to anyway. _) “But you and Brian, did you two…know each other? Before the stuff with Alex?” 

“Guess you could say that.” Tim’s throat ached. He scratched at his neck and up into his hair, at the hot prickling along his scalp. “Back in college.”

“I don’t think we ever met.” 

Tim thought back to the tape in his old house, the one Jay had stolen from his pocket. 

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” 

With a rustling of leaves that made Tim jump, Jay emerged from the dark, motioning in the dim light for the other two to follow him.

The three backtracked across Jay’s path through the lot, dark shapes looming up beside them. Tim could smell rotting wood, underscored by something familiar. 

“Wait.” It was obvious now that he thought about it. The other two had probably already noticed. “This is the old church, isn’t it? The one that uh--”

“Oh!” It sounded like Jessica had smacked herself in the forehead.  _ “Yeah, _ that makes sense.”

Jay tugged at Tim’s sleeve, pulling him further along. Jessica followed, pointing the tiny flashlight down near their feet. Tim thought he heard her grumble something about wishing the invitation had said ‘morning’ instead. 

Squinting, Tim thought he could make out a squat, low shape that ended in a peaked top, silhouetted against the trees. As they drew closer, he could barely make out the texture of cinder blocks, and when he was close enough for his phone to make a difference, he could see burn scars against the concrete. 

Jay gestured to the building. 

“What do you think this place was?” Jessica held up the light. “Storage or something?”

Jay shrugged. 

Tim ran his hand across the cool concrete. “If I had to take a guess, I’d say it was bui--”

Jessica shrieked, knocking back against Tim. 

“There’s someone out there, there’s  _ definitely-- _ ” 

“Where? What’s--?”

“Right there, there was a--”

“What’d you see?”

“It was a guy, all hunched over and--”

“Wearing a--a yellow--?”

“No, it was black, and he had a--”

“Like a black mask?”

“No, like a jacket, but his face, there was something  _ wrong _ with it.”

“It wasn’t--”

“No, it wasn’t that thing, but this guy was really pale, like--”

Tim fished for the knife in his pocket, pulling it out clumsily. He could see Jay press himself flat against the concrete wall, scanning the tree line with his camera. Tim did the same, knife in one hand and lit phone in the other, and Jessica followed. Whatever it was, it couldn’t get them from behind. 

_ “Leave us alone!”  _ Jessica called into the dark. 

Tim nudged her arm, voice a low whisper.  _ “Shut up!” _

All Tim could hear was their ragged breathing. Back still flush against the wall, he peered into the woods where Jessica had been pointing.  _ Nothing. _

Something rustled in the underbrush on the opposite side of the lot. The three knocked together, and Tim brandished the knife. By the time he faced the noise, whatever caused it was gone. 

“Is it eight forty-three?” Jessica whispered. 

“Hell if I know,” Tim whispered back. 

Silence.  _ Goddamn _ silence. 

A bolt of lightning shot through Tim’s head, and there was wet grass against his face. He could see something important just beside his hand, gleaming, and he tried to reach for it, but his hand wouldn’t--wouldn’t-- 

Muffled sounds above him, and a thousand needles hit his arm, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t pull back. The grass shifted two ways at once, blue-red, cyan-magenta, and he could feel a  crawling under his skin, and something was gripping him, the needles still in his arm  _ don’t worry it’s just a pinch  _ and it was like someone had tightened a vice-grip around his chest, like the ribs were bending, ready to snap. 

Tim gasped for air. He saw faces. He screwed his eyes shut. 

He wanted it to stop. It hurt and he wanted it to stop. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it to stop. 

Static inside his head, static behind his eyes, the sound singing in his ears. 

A worried voice above him, distorted, played and fed over itself backwards, and the wet grass pressed against his face, hot and swollen and  _ wrong. _ The voice was louder now, overlapped and echoing, and it was too much,  _ too much, too much. _ Couldn’t move. Trees like hands against the sky. A noise from the chest, distressed, foreign. Something was holding them and they had to get away, had to  _ move _ , and all at once they could, twitching and pulling at limbs like wet sand. 

Their leg ached. 

They should not be here. 

They could smell the lightning-strike, the smoke in the forest, and they followed it. Sounds behind them, leaves crackling underfoot and angry calls, and they ran, their leg screaming with pain. Not important. Had to run, had to hide. They were slow now, the hurt making them slow, but they had to get away. 

They were very good at hiding. 

The rustling of leaves faded. The bird-calls faded. 

Again they picked up the scent, like smoke and blood. It was a dangerous scent, usually something to run from, but they knew it was important now. They had been told it would be important now. 

Closer, closer, and the scent burned their nose. They felt lightning across their skull and tensed to run, but they saw nothing. The thunder came, but they saw nothing. They waited. 

They moved again, closer, and they saw it. 

They saw him. 

He was perched on a fallen log, watching, a spot of faded yellow against the dark. 

Something in them lit up, and they rushed forward,  _ missed you, missed you. _

Their brother stood up, holding his hands out flat, a warning. They stopped short. 

They didn’t see anything. What did their brother see? 

Their brother approached slowly, carefully. All at once he stopped, and his hands started to move, spelling out messages in the way he had taught them.  _ “It is not safe.” _

They did not understand. 

_ “There is a wall between us. We look through a fracture. The wall will heal soon. You do not want to be where I am.” _

They lifted their own hands, clumsy and shaking.  _ “I do.” _

Their brother tensed, visibly frustrated.  _ “You do not.” _

It did not make sense, but their brother was very clever. Their brother understood many things. Sometimes he would even answer their questions, explain so they could understand.  _ “Did you find it?” _

Their brother’s sigh was quiet, but they were very good at listening. He lifted his hands.  _ “Yes.” _

Their face did not move, but they were pleased. Their brother understood, they knew.

Meanwhile, their brother paced anxiously. This was not expected. This was supposed to be good news. 

He finally stopped, facing them again.  _ “Time is short. There is more to say.” _

They stood tall, expectant. 

Their brother seemed to relax slightly.  _ “You are not like the other. You listen well.” _

They hissed at mention of the liar, but quickly fell quiet. They had to pay attention. 

Their brother continued.  _ “The blind man is here, with me.” _ The two of them had invented the word for the blind man together, starting with the movement for eyeglasses. (The liar wore those sometimes, and they understood them.)  _ “But the bird is not.” _ The bird was named with the movements for bird and video-record. His name was newer to their language. 

Their brother paced again for a bit, at the edge of the fence he could see but they could not, before continuing again.  _ “Like before, there are tools. Like before, we must retain the tools we have. They are weapons in the wrong hands.” _

They cut in.  _ “The blind man is with you. Who is left to hold a weapon? The bird?” _

Their brother’s shoulders hitched. He was angry. They made themselves lower, closer to the ground. 

He faced them again, motions short and clipped.  _ “The bird is a tool. The one who forgets is a tool.”  _ The motion for her name was ‘see’ followed by ‘forget’, both near the head. _ “There are still those who would use our tools as weapons against us. Like before, it has its own.” _

Again and again. They had hoped that the blind man’s death would let them rest. They would protect the liar, as before. They would run, as before. They did not want to be near it. 

Their brother stood back, bemused.  _ “You are frustrated.” _

They nodded reluctantly.    
  
_ “Do not be. The blind man has gone to the ark. The liar lives. The one who forgets lives. You have succeeded for now.” _

Their brother’s words helped, but only slightly. 

They felt a buzzing in the air, and the image of their brother wavered and distorted. They could still make out the motions of his hands. 

_ “There is more: The bird may have found a new face, but he is not like us. He is wrong.” _

_ “Distorted,” _ they signed. 

_ “Yes, and worse now. We cannot trust him. This does not mean we cannot help him. Now follow me.” _

Their brother ran, and they followed, careful not to cross the ripple in the air. They did not like running like this. They did not like the distance. 

Their brother led them to a hollow stump, lying on its side uncomfortably close to the barrier. Nudging it closer to them with their foot, they looked inside. In the stump was a battered camera, old and familiar.

They stared up at their brother.  _ “This belongs to the blind man.” _

He nodded.  _ “Belonged, years ago. He has no use for it now. I want you to give this to the bird. He will understand the message inside.” _

They could find the bird. They could deliver the message. They picked up the camera, holding it as gently as they were able.

The ripples grew into waves. The image of their brother distorted further. He tilted his head fondly toward them. 

_ “It is still so strange to see you without your face.” _   
  
With a high whine, the ripples cleared. Their brother was gone. 

They clutched the camera closer to their chest. 

The blood-and-smoke scent started to clear, along with the electric buzzing in their skull. After one last look back into the brush, they started back toward the clearing. This time, they could be more careful, stepping gingerly on their injured leg. 

They heard branches break underfoot and froze. 

“Tim?”    
  
They were not ‘Tim’. 

They ducked into the underbrush behind a thick oak tree.

“Tim?” The voice was louder this time, closer. “Where are you?” 

Finding the one who forgets would be the easiest way to find the bird, they guessed. They still did not want to. 

“Tim?”

They sighed and left their hiding place, leaves crunching under their weight as they approached her. 

“Tim--?” She heard before she saw, turning to face them with a glowing light in one hand. “Oh, thank god.”

They stared.    
  
“You...okay? Wait, is that--is that a camera?” 

They tilted their head. 

“Will you…?” Her voice lilted higher, like she was talking to a child. Patronizing. “Will you come with me out of the woods, please?”

They nodded. She would take them to the bird. 

She started forward, and they followed. 

It was soon clear that she had stayed close to the trails while searching for the liar. She did not remember these woods. It was not surprising. 

Her route was not as quick as theirs would have been, but still they followed. Before too long, they were back at the concrete structure. Their memories were fractured, but they remembered this place from earlier in the night.

It took them a moment to recognize the bird with his new face. It looked ridiculous. 

They approached him, and he recoiled slightly, pressing his back against the wall. 

The bird had not seen them in a while. 

They remembered their hands around his throat, pressing until his eyes rolled back. Their brother had been proud of them that night. 

They drew in a little closer, just to watch him shrink further into himself. The bird had been brave, they remembered, but it looked like he still retained some instinct to protect himself. Useless, though. The blind man had still found him. 

Brave, but easily broken. And, it seemed, easily put back together. 

They pulled back slightly and handed him the camera. 

He took it clumsily in one hand and pointed the other, smaller camera at it. Strange. But the bird was strange. 

They felt exhaustion tugging at their limbs and fought against it. They weren’t ready. They had fulfilled their purpose, but they were not ready to sleep. Their vision swam, and they stumbled against the concrete wall, holding themselves up.  _ Not now. Not so soon. _

The one who forgets approached, tense. “Tim, listen to me. Just  _ tell me if you’re alright. _ Should I call an ambulance?” 

They were not ‘Tim’.

She put a hand on their shoulder, and they batted it away hard. The bird reached for them. He tried to pull them back and away from her, and they twisted, forcing him to lose his grip.  

A jolt of pain shot up their leg, and they fell. 

_ Not now. Not yet. _

Their vision clouded over. Their limbs buzzed and fell numb.    
  
They slept. 


End file.
